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

Here is some more documentation from Seoul, South Korea.

The video shows how Emotional Cities was displayed in Seoul, where the project was made in collaboration with Art Center Nabi and the community Cyworld. The exhibition was on display between February 27 and March 28, and during this period almost 150 000 Koreans participated.

About a week ago the light installation and project in Seoul ended. Almost 150 000 Koreans participated and answered the question “How are you today?” over a one-month period. After light installations and exhibitions in Stockholm and Seoul, Emotional Cities will now continue in other cities. More about this later…

Will the next light installation be on the Grande Arche in Paris?

Today Emotional Cities is the cover story on Cyworld, a Korean community with 20 million members. For the exhibition at Art Center Nabi in Seoul, the project is collaborating with Cyworld, which has contributed to vastly increased numbers of participants. The article featured today on Cyworld meant an all-time high with 12 500 answers worldwide to the question “How are you today?”.

Update: It is around 7 PM on Friday, March 7, and we already had 57 000 answers today! Almost 15 000 people made comments on the article about Emotional Cities in Cyworld.

The top of Cyworld’s first page today.

The article on Cyworld today.

The light installation in Stockholm has spontaneously been prolonged for a couple of days. It will be switched off on Wednesday, March 5. This means that the project will have had light installations simultaneously in Seoul and Stockholm for about a week.

In Seoul Emotional Cities has had a good start, with around 4-5000 participants per day so far. Most answers in Korea get collected at the community Cyworld, our online collaborating partner in Seoul. These answers are labelled as “anonymous” in the Emotional Cities database. But the fact is that everyone answering the question “How are you today?” at Cyworld, are registered members at the community.

The Emotional Cities project in Seoul is carried out in collaboration with Art Center Nabi.

Emotional Cities now starts in Seoul, South Korea. Together with Art Center Nabi the project is presented on LED screens at the SK T-Tower, a state of the art skyscraper in central Seoul. Online Emotional Cities is collaborating with Cyworld, a community with around 20 million members. You can see the special event website they made for the project here.

Update: The exhibition in Seoul has been prolonged until March 28.

At present Emotional Cities is being displayed in a “sneak preview” at the SK T-Tower in Seoul, South Korea. The project is being hosted by the Art Center Nabi in their exhibition series COMO. In February 2008 the exhibition will be up again - and this time for a longer period.

SK T-Tower in Seoul