I’m at CES, but since there’s plenty of coverage of all the big announcements, I thought I’d feature some of the more beautiful yet seemingly impractical products out there on the show floor. For some reason, these seem to be coming from Korea. Perhaps they even have a word for something strikingly beautiful yet impractical in Korean; let me know if someone knows the word for such a thing. They feel as if they are relics from the future, where technology is so deeply integrated into stuff that it just becomes part of the background of the object.
Unfortunately, I took these photos without keeping track of the names of the companies that produced them, so you may have to treat this as a bit of a treasure hunt. Please let me know if you know who produced them, and I’ll give them proper credit. Or, if I have time, I’ll track them down again today before I leave.
The first set is from a small booth in the North Hall, in the Korean section of the International Gateway. Each of these pieces has small, iPhone-size video screens embedded in them, with animated versions of the types of traditional paintings you would find on a folding multi-panel rice-paper screen.
Video Folding Screen
This first one is the most straightforward; it’s just over a foot high, and has eight animated videos playing on it.
Video Boat
This uses the same technology with six animated screens to make something reminiscent of a sailboat. This is the first one I saw, and is quite beautifully finished with lacquer and gold leaf.
Video Fan
This is my favorite one, and resembles a folding fan with twelve video screens forming a continuous series of animated panels. Due to the electronics involved that appear to be hidden in the base, I don’t believe it could be used as a fan (though it’s believable that it could fold and unfold), but in a few years, I wouldn’t be surprised if something like this becomes an actual portable product.
"Music Baggie"
The “Music Baggie” is from another Korean company showing in South Hall 2, that has used flat, bendable Electrostatic speakers to create audio devices that can be part of textiles. Electrostatic speakers aren’t as commonly seen now, but they used to be targeted at audiophiles. They were also showing electrostatic headphones, but those didn’t look as interesting, so I didn’t photograph them. This seems like a semi-reasonable product, perhaps for high-end shopping bags.
Music Roll
This is by the same company and uses the same technology to create a speaker consisting of a cylindrical roll. They claim that you can vary the audio characteristics to suit your tastes by rolling it tighter or looser. This sounded pretty decent, actually.
Music Boat
My final photo is from a different Korean company also located in the South Hall, using similar electrostatic speaker technology. Their main product appears to be transparent speaker films that you can place over displays, so you don’t have to have separate speakers from the displays. However, I really liked this example, where they made boat sails out of the speaker film, and integrated it with a sailboat design. Perhaps next year, we’ll see a combination of the boat-sail video screen with the boat-sail speaker to make a perfect multimedia model boat.