Borealis is an interactive lighting installation comprised of 1000 colour LEDs suspended in an intricate network above a park in the community of Belgravia.

Natural language processing is used to parse text from the Community Forum as well as from community member’s Facebook, Twitter and RSS feeds. Words with similar semantic meaning are grouped together, assigned similar colours and incorporated into lighting animations above the park.

In essence, Borealis is a visualization of the collective conversations taking place in the community. On site members of the public can interact with the lights which exhibit flocking and swarming behavior based on the movements of people below them.

Role

Concept, design, implementation.

Materials

Aircraft cable, 1000 RGB LEDs, microcontrollers, linux server, wireless nework,
DMX interfaces, web camera, solar power sytem, website.

Dimensions

60′x60′