I recently came across an interesting video of a colorful fluid/particle simulation within a multitouch sphere, posted by an arts collective in the UK called Seeper. It’s a nice piece of interactive art, although apparently still a work in progress.
I haven’t heard much about the Microsoft sphere that “surfaced” (pun presumably intented) last year in Redmond’s research facility, in the midst of their push for adoption of Surface tables. That must be a work in progress as well. Although Microsoft doesn’t seem to be pushing Surface much these days, probably sensing that Windows 7’s multitouch capabilities have a better shot at gaining a toehold in the market. The content on the Microsoft sphere wasn’t nearly as compelling.
I’m not sure whether any multitouch sphere will be readily available as a product anytime soon, but it’s certainly been demonstrated that it’s feasible to build one, so it’s a viable custom project. While it’s a cool and unusual form factor, it seems to me that it lends itself to a fairly limited set of applications.
Global Imagination has been making spherical projection systems for museums for a while. Adding multitouch interaction capability to spheres opens up possibilities for richer experiences, but the speherical form factor is probably still going to be best suited for globes, planets, or other science center and planetarium installations.
Anyway, it’s good to see interactive artists applying different types of interaction to a novel form factor like a sphere. The fluidity of motion, as you can see in the video, is also nicely conducive to the shape.
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