How cool is this?

How cool is the invention in this BBC story - 'Magic brush' paints visual world. The article links to th MIT Media Lab.

'The I/O Brush is the brainchild of Kimiko Ryokai, a researcher at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The device allows children to pick up colours and textures from their environment and paint with them on a large digital screen. Ms Ryokai has dubbed it the I/O Brush as it has an input and an output. The children just call it the magic paint brush and use it in ways she never anticipated. ... Ms Ryokai wanted to know what would happen if you could literally suck the ink from the environment. ... She found that pictures contained many personal objects and provoked story-telling about the images, such as where the colour came from, where they got it and what it was about. "A brown wasn't just a brown, but a brown that came from their favourite teddy bear or friend's hair," she says.'

Ooh, I want one. It would be so much fun to create artwork with not only the colours but the textures around you. Imagine if the unit could be portable. On a country walk you could store the grainy texture of bark, the autumnal shades of different leaves, spongy green moss, bright shiny berries, the translucent quality of wild flowers, or even the fluffy surface of your favourite wool scarf.

The world as a palette.

Happy Journeys.