Kyoto’s mui Lab is showcasing “Hashira no Kioku (Height Marking in Wood),” a smart art system that turns your beautiful life memory into a work of art, so you can savor the moment every day and forever. Developed collaboratively by mui Lab, an IoT design startup, and Wacom, the world’s leading provider of pen tablets, the system connects a wood column and pen — an ordinary utensil and furniture — via the Cloud.

The wooden column is impregnated with the mui technology that transforms a natural wood surface into a touch-sensitive smart screen. When Wacom’s digital pen is used to mark a child’s height on the column, the system automatically registers a measurement and displays its value on an adjacent box. It also occasionally displays a beautiful poem about children’s growth.

Just like the “mui” smart-home control panel, which we are also showcasing at IFA, “Hashira no Kioku (Height Marking in Wood)” is built around the principles of “calm technology” and designed to stay out of the user’s consciousness while fulfilling its purpose of bringing back the joyous feelings for you. Drawing inspiration from the Taoist philosophy of “mui shizen,” mui-enabled systems are created to harness the power of cutting-edge technology to create harmony among technology, the humans who use it and the nature surrounding them.