The project is developed in collaboration with Varvara Guljajeva.
The Rhythm of City is a mixed reality real-time artwork that applies geo-located social data from Twitter, Flickr, and Youtube for an artistic purpose. Modified metronomes are performing in the rhythm of selected cities’ digital pace of life. It means the score is composed by the digital inhabitants in real-time.
The aim is to explain digital geo-located social content and characterizes cities in an original way. Even more, the work is an ongoing, unique, and unpredictable performance that embraces different locations, digital social data, and physical kinetic motion.
The installation is a sonic and at the same time visual interface for perceiving the urban life and culture of different locations. Moreover, it gives an alternative meaning and purpose to the location-specific invisible online data.
The installation consists of 10 modified metronomes whose rhythms correspond to the selected cities’ digital pace of life. Every metronome represents a city. The audience is given a chance to discover and experience an alternative way of perceiving different locations through an unpredictable and continuous performance of 10 metronomes. Our concerns are about the malleability of the digital world to the physical one, and the interpretation of social data for artistic purposes. The Rhythm of City is an inter-disciplinary artwork that demonstrates creative approach towards emerging social web technology. At the same time, the artwork draws attention to the vanishing border between virtual and physical, and allows perceiving a city’s digital pace of life.
Concerning technical realization, we are scrabbing geo-located social data (Twitter, Flicker, Youtube) from the 10 selected cities every minute. The software is done in Python. These data is then quantified and converted into a speed on servomotors. Below each metronome is located a motor that realizes the speed of metronome.
Technical rider of installation