Adour’s virtual sommelier forms part of Potion’s efforts to liberate computing from the confines of the computer by reinventing it as an interactive experience that can come in different physical forms and be shared with other people. Working from a studio above a bustling street in New York’s Chinatown, they have already transformed floors, walls and furniture, as well as the bars at Azour and another New York wine bar, Clo, into communal “screens” that are controlled by human gestures or movement, rather than with a keyboard and mouse.

The duo first met as computer science students on a course run by the software designer John Maeda at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. Mr. Tiongson then studied filmmaking at Columbia University, and Mr. Schiffman taught at High Tech High School in San Diego. They met again at a lecture given by Mr. Maeda in New York. “We were chatting afterwards and John said: ‘You two should start something together. Tell me the name of your company and I’ll get you a job,’” recalled Mr. Tiongson. “We quickly came up with a name — TS Design — and John made an introduction. Nothing came of it, but our own ball began rolling. It turned out that Jared and I shared the same interest — how to get things out of the box and off the screen.”

Image Potion's "Living Wall" at the University of Pennsylvania's veterinary school. Credit... Jared Schiffman for Potion

After they founded Potion in 2005, much of their early work was for museums including the National World War I Museum in Kansas City, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Building Museum in Washington. Those institutions wanted to find more inspiring ways of enabling visitors to learn more about their exhibits than conventional rows of computers. Potion’s alternatives combine advanced projection technology with human interaction software that allows visitors to call up the information and images they would like to see by making physical gestures, such as jumping on a digital symbol on the floor or stroking one on a table.

One such project was to develop a digital version of the Star-Spangled Banner, the flag that flew above Fort McHenry during the British bombardment in 1812, for the National Museum of American History in Washington. The original is so fragile that it has to be exhibited behind glass. Potion designed an interactive table on which images of fragments of the flag are projected at full scale and such high resolution that you, and anyone standing beside you, can see details, like tiny stitches and tattered edges that are barely visible on the original. “A shared experience is always a better experience, because the brain attaches different emotions to it,” said Mr. Schiffman. “It’s not always easy, but when we get it right it’s a real success. You’d be surprised by how many conversations are started between total strangers standing at the flag.”