The article about Emotional Cities published in The Local on Tuesday, called Stockholm art installation wins international award, is at the moment one of the newspapers five most emailed articles today. Written by Charlotte West, the article gives a good introduction to the project. The Local is a Swedish newspaper in English language.
Emotional Cities won both a gold and a silver at the London International Awards yesterday! The project had already won a silver pen at the One Show, New York, a bronze at the Clio Awards, Miami Beach, and a special mention at the Webby Awards, New York.
We have started to develop a user’s guide for the Emotional Cities website. The goal is to make it easier for eneryone to participate, and to understand all the different functions. Please read the first version of the guide here (so far ony in Swedish).
Konstprojektet Emotional Cities lyser upp Hötorgshusen igen!
På lördag (1/11) tänds ljusinstallationen Emotional Cities återigen på Hötorgshusens fasader – och den kommer att lysa hela vintern, fram till den 28 februari 2009.
Färgen på ljuset bestäms av hur människorna i staden mår. I fjol medverkade tiotusentals stockholmare genom att besvara frågan “Hur mår du idag?” på projektets hemsida www.emotionalcities.com. Sju ansikten med olika uttryck och färger utgör svarsalternativ. Ett kontinuerligt beräknat medianvärde för samtliga stockholmare projiceras på de fem Hötorgshusen.
Förra året ställdes projektet ut på Moderna Museet samtidigt med ljusinstallationen på Hötorgshusen. Emotional Cities genomfördes dessutom parallellt på Art Center Nabi i Seoul, Sydkorea. I 20-miljonerstaden Seoul deltog över 100 000 personer.
Emotional Cities är ett projekt av konstnären Erik Krikortz. Krikortz bor och arbetar i Stockholm och Berlin. Han är för närvarande även aktuell på Sevilla-biennalen med ljusinstallationen Colour by Numbers.
Perhaps you have noticed that some charts have been loading slowly? Now the system has been trimmed by the eminent programmer Björn, and the charts load in the twink of an eye!
The light installation in Stockholm will come back in November, and light up Stockholm during the dark period. Perhaps one or two other cities might also have light installations next winter. More about that later.
A Korean designer, So Young Park, made a concept for a public light installation with interesting similarities to Emotional Cities. Both concept were developed at the same time, and none of us knew of the other. Here are some sketches made by So Young, and a text describing the project.
So Young is now working as a designer at Samsung in Seoul, developing interfaces for smart phones.
- Symbol of Women’s Happiness, An installation on a wall of a tall building in a city and the process for it -
An installation design for women. This is in the middle of a city and installed on a wall of a tall building. It is made of neon and the color is changing. It means “if women are happy, the color is pink. But if not happy, it is black.” In other words, it shows how happy women in the society are now. Women visit a website to poll about their daily life. It is possible to get some data from statistics of divorce and marriage rate or something about women and daily news and events. This information becomes the source of the processing. Through this, the installation color will be changed and show the index of women’s happiness. Couples, families and society see it, then people notice how happy women are. So they can communicate more. People give a feedback and it will affect on the installation again. Through this process, interaction occurs.
The functions of the installation are
1. Communication tool between women and society
2. The sender of information about women
3. Symbol of women’s happiness in the society