Have you ever felt like you just weren’t getting enough bang for your buck out of your walls? I mean, they’re good for keeping the roof up and as a place to hang things, but what do they really do? We feel ya, and apparently so do the inventive and crafty geeks up in Boston’s MIT Media Labs. Members of the Lab’s High-Low Tech group, which fuses high and low technological materials, processes, and cultures to create futuristic versions of everyday objects, have come up with a way to transform your walls into a functional room controller.The Living Wall is a culmination of several projects and developments along the line of sensor-embedded paper and textiles. It is an interactive wallpaper that can be programmed to monitor its environment and control lighting and sound. By running your hand across the wallpaper—which is constructed out of paper, paint and arduino sensors, then hooked up to a paper computing kit—you can turn on a lamp, play music, or send a message to a friend. It’s the greatest development since The Clapper!The Living Wall is currently on view at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, MA as part of the exhibition New Materiality: Digital Dialogues at the Boundaries of Contemporary Craft. But what we really want to know is, when is it going to be available at Target? We think it could really tie the room together.
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