Keyboards without keys, without connectors,
without paint – only wood and recessed hand prints. The dawn of the computer age? No, but the unusual project of a newly graduated sculptor from Vienna.

Commissioned by Siemens Design, Nele Ströbel modeled and collaged studies on computer workstations of the future as “artist in residence” from 1985 to 1987.
Biomorphic keyboards and intelligible computer forms were intended to trans-form the tools of digital technology from the storage surface into space – the keyboard as a bridge, not as an interface between man and machine, “because there I have a direct contact, haptic, with the device” – a new, “sculpturally” conceived combination of ergonomics and aesthetics. The human being as a competent user was the focus of user test parties…