Tracking Transmedia

When we imagine displays, we think of computer monitors and smartphone touch screens. They’re basically TVs we stick to things. The idea works well for anything already shaped like a rectangle.

 

Disney Research has come up with an interesting solution called Printed Optics. It’s a threaded display (basically fiber optics) embedded within an object itself--almost like a circulatory system that moves light rather than blood. Its endpoints create a display of absolutely any shape. Whereas Teddy Ruxpin had a cassette player awkwardly shoved into his back, Disney’s tech could make his whole face into a contoured display.

 

The breakthrough here is that Disney is printing these fiber-optic-like tubes right inside any solid form, via 3-D printing. “No one shape is any harder to make than any other. As long as it can be 3-D printed, it can be made,” project researcher Karl Willis tells Co.Design....