Image: Dentsu London / Making Future Magic

Most of the time, when a hot new gadget or something otherwise tech-y comes out, it’s viewed strictly as a tool. OK, so maybe there’s an element of fun mixed in there, too – the iPod (fun storage device), for example, or ever-slimmer digital cameras (fun image capturing/way to embarrass your friends on Facebook on Monday morning devices).

When the iPad was released, I think most of us looked at it in the way that has become our custom. We thought, “wow, there’s a neat new tool for looking at stuff online and a whole new way of reading digital content.” But while we were busy thinking inside the box, a small minority of folks where thinking, “wow, there’s a fascinating new artistic medium.”

Image: Dentsu London / Making Future Magic

Enter the creative crew at Dentsu London, who enlisted the help of tech design consultancy Berg to do something entirely new and utterly inspiring with the iPad. It’s best to watch the video for a technical description of how they did what they did, but in layman’s terms, they figured out a way to paint the air using digital images.

Making Future Magic: iPad light painting from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

Really, the best description I’ve seen for what’s happening here is “geek graffiti.” It’s just a beautiful utilization of technology for creative, artistic purposes – the sort of thing that I imagined would be happening in the far-off future when I was a little kid. The best thing is that the people responsible for this brilliant idea clearly have a lot of fun doing it. Need proof? Go to the Dentsu website and click on “People.”

Dentsu is working on turning this exploration of the iPad’s capabilities into an app at this very moment. That’s right – soon you’ll be able to “paint” your very own “geek graffiti.”