Tableau: A Physical E-mail

When was the last time you sent someone a snail mail or a print out of your holiday photos by mail? With almost everyone using  Twitter and Facebook keeping in touch with family and friends across the globe has never been easier: your latest photos are shared on Flickr and your friends can stay updated with your day-to-day life on Twitter. The down side of this is that the olden day excitement of receiving something physical, like a letter or a photo print out, is almost a rare occurrence.

Tableau is a project by John Kestner that connects physical and digital media. It allows the user to recieve ‘physical e-mails’, stored in a drawer of a table. The humble, classic nightstand essentially acts a photo printer and scanner that connects to a Twitter feed. It prints out photos it receives on Twitter and scans photos put in the drawer. Pretty cool, hey?

Tableau is assembled from reclaimed materials,“obsolete” electronics and works over WiFi or cellular networks. To print out the photos, it uses Zink paper (the same type of paper used in Polaroid Po-Go) attached attached at the back of the drawer.

Kestner describes Tableau as ‘an anti-computer experience’. The project is currently on display at the Saint Etienne International Design Biennale.