How could ornaments have a use per se? Ornaments can have a feature which would make them potentially interesting for a possible next generation of tangible interface: Patterns can have a "flow" - a rhythm which, to a degree, makes the patterns intuitively predictable when touched. The pattern guides the hand on a tactile basis, similar to what a piece of music does via the auditory sense.

Human brains are inference machines. For instance, when we hear a piece of music, our brain, interpreting rhythm and harmony of the piece, predicts what comes next, fractions of a second before the actual tones arrive in the brain, with our "inner ear"; Similarly, when reading, we anticipate the word which comes next before we actually read it - because we know the flow of the language in use. If this were not the case, it would not be possible to read fluently. I think that the pleasure we derive from harmonies and rhythms in music and language is nothing but the brain's positive feedback when its split-second predictions are realized.

To fulfill this function on a tactile basis, intuitive ornaments should not be merely repetitive like a wallpaper pattern but display an internal rule of variation according to a certain harmony.

The second step therefore was to experiment with various algorithms to produce extruded surfaces with a certain "flow".

Here one of the first results, a board with various pebble-shaped LED buttons, on proximity lighting up with an onyx-inspired pattern.