Displaying futures

The third volume in the ‘Displaying Futures’ series focuses on ‘Ubiquitous Interaction’ and appears to coincide with another event organized by our ‘Displaying Futures’ initiative, which we launched in 2011. Following Tokyo and Taipeh, Seoul is now the venue for an international symposium. This time, the guests are invited to the Korea Furniture Museum, following the Xue Xue Institute in Taipeh, Taiwan’s first private university of the arts, design, and culture, and the German ambassador’s residence in Tokyo. Whence we entered virgin territory in terms of communications and the strategic idea, in pursuit of our wish to create an atmosphere, to generate a lively dialog, full of ideas and inspiration. The ‘Ubiquitous Interaction’ symposium is one module in our expedition to discover innovations. And like its predecessors, it stands out for a dialog between our clients and experts who are at home in a variety of disciplines. It expresses Merck’s sustainable approach, which hinges on fostering the development of new technologies and products that do justice to the changing needs of display users. In the form of ‘Displaying Futures’ we have expanded the range of our communications. Taking as its heading ‘Perceptions” (book and symposium, 2011) we and our clients were confronted by a world of ‘outside’ perceptions, ideas, concept and visions by artists, designers, architects and scientists that expanded our horizon and enriched our own perception. In ‘Seamless Transitions’ (book and symposium, 2012) we continued our journey down the interdisciplinary path and concerned ourselves with seamless transitions, above all as regards information and communications, in the megacities of tomorrow (see the chapter: Seamless Urbanity). Future mobility as well as the networking of driver and vehicle (see the chapter: Seamless Mobility) were at the center of attention, as was the dissolution of matter (Seamless Materiality), for example when the computer seemingly disappears and things learn to think – which was the subtitle Luzia Kälin and Didier Knösel chose for their essay, in which among other things they investigate super-thin light sources, smart materials and the impact of 3D printing on the products of the future. Under the keyword of ‘Ubiquitous Computing’ they provide the interface between the present book on ‘Ubiquitous Interaction’ and the eponymous symposium.