Piezo Interactions

Piezo Interactions is a series of applied material experiments exploring the potential of an emerging soft material system synthesized at the High Performance Ceramics Laboratory[↗] at EMPA. The material consists of an elastomer composite[◉] dispersed with carbon black[◉] and hosted into various soft substrate materials. The investigation began with two known properties: the material can exist in two distinct forms - solid and liquid depending on the solvent content[◉] , and it exhibits piezoresistive behavior[↗] , allowing deformation to be measured electronically through a simple voltage divider and microcontroller. From these foundations, a collaboration between an industrial designer and a materials scientist explored the interaction affordances enabled by the material. The resulting experiments revealed diverse modes of tactile interaction and demonstrated the material's potential as a soft technological interface, ultimately expanding the perception of soft materials as functional components for future interactive systems.