Aim and Classification

MediaBlocks certainly counts as one of the most well-known examples of media TUIs (not to say of the overall TUIs' examples). Designed by Brygg Ullmer, Hiroshi Ishii and Dylan Glas from the Tangible Media Group at MIT, this interface offers to re-imagine the containment of online media. This could help the user transporting media from one digital device (e.g. a whiteboard) to another (e.g. a printer) in a seamless, natural and ergonomic manner.
To achieve this goal, the authors propose the use of small wooden blocks (i.e. the mediaBlocks) serving as physical icons (or ``phicons'') for online media. The basic idea is for the token to represent the media, not to store it. In short, a mediaBlock embedded an URL pointing to the actual media it stands for.
This forerunner project is a good example of a relational TUI, in which the tokens associate digital information.