Microsoft Surface | An abstract of life in the workplace of tomorrow with suppressed visibility of technology and devices; directed by Microsoft’s Dane Storrusten, created by INVIVIA Inc.

Slashgear | Microsoft has released a few interesting concept videos over the past years, usually tipping their vision of multitouch, mobile handsets and the interaction between intelligent devices. Their two latest videos, “Home” and “Work,” take things more into the bizarre: created to demonstrate XUI (“experience-user-interface”), it’s what Microsoft sees as the step after natural user interfaces (NUI) such as their multitouch Surface table. 

What that basically means is a couple of under-explained futuristic computing devices — such as the laptop, shown above, the closed lid of which works both as a single-user Surface and, later in the video, as a scanner — and some even less feasible concepts. They get past the “would it actually work” aspect by describing the videos as “poetic narrative.” The videos were created for the Microsoft Volume Studios group, about which little is known, by interactive design firm INVIVIA. In their CHI 2009 submission, INVIVIA describes the concepts as follows:

“The hyper-real phenomenon portrayed focuses on an ability to instantly personalize space as well as inject/reveal hidden properties of daily objects. The emphasis both in concept and execution was to remove the digital influence inherent to computing and focus on its repercussions. Analog devices behave in extraordinary ways in tandem with, or sometimes in the complete absence of, complicated computing systems. The actual filming of the video also reflects this approach: lighting and placement of real objects appear rendered and rendered objects appear real.”  — INVIVIA