Cloud

by Hilary Harp and Barry Moon

Location

Mesa Arts Center
One East Main Street
Mesa, AZ 85201

On view through October 2014

Installation Details

Situated above an entrance to the Ikeda theater, Cloud is an interactive media installation that allows visitors to explore collective mood.

A dynamic mobile awash in colorful projected light shows current tweets, which have been chosen for their use of emotional words, like “happy”, “sorry”, “laugh”, and “cry.” A Microsoft Kinect device is used to track the positions of the spheres on the mobile. This enables the projected text fragments to follow the moving spheres as they drift freely. Other projections of moving colored circles reflect an overall mood of the system based on analysis of Twitter data.

Viewers can interact with the piece in two ways:  1. directly controlling fans that move the mobile via buttons mounted on podiums, and/or 2. inputting text (tweeting) in Twitter in the hope of seeing their thoughts projected.

This artwork was commissioned by Mesa Arts Center

 

More about Hilary Harp and Barry Moon