Psychotropic Walls

Via Technovelgy - Where Science Meets Fiction, here's an article on a wild display surface upon which small panels move with precision and "ripple," creating strange, almost biologically protoplasmic motion:

HypoSurface Walls Are Full of Life.

Bill Christensen, the author of the Technovelgy article on HypoSurface notes that this technology is a close approximation of science fiction writer J.G. Ballard's warped domiciles:

HypoSurface is a pretty good implementation of the plastex walls in J.G. Ballard's psychotropic houses from his 1960's Vermillion Sands stories:

It was a beautiful room all right, with opaque plastex walls and white fluo-glass ceiling, but something terrible had happened there. As it responded to me, the ceiling lifting slightly and the walls growing less opaque, reflecting my perspective-seeking eye, I noticed that curious mottled knots were forming, indicating where the room had been strained and healed faultily. Deep hidden rifts began to distort the sphere, ballooning out one of the alcoves like a bubble of overextended gum.

Here's a clip:

More examples may be found on the HypoSurface web site. This company is based in Cambridge MA. Perhaps its location explained why the surface of Spring Street was so pocked and wavy.