relief is an actuated tabletop display, which is able to render and animate three-dimensional shapes with
a malleable surface. the project is the creation of mit students daniel leithinger, adam kumpf and hiroshi
ishii in the tangible media group. rather than experience information through a two dimensional display,
relief is able to represent data as a three dimension surface. the system uses a series of 120 rods with a
stretched piece fabric covering it. open source hardware and software controls the system which can also
sense a user pushing or pulling the rods. while it can’t display images of complex data, relief excels at
showing geographical terrain.

http://tangible.media.mit.edu