A generative sculpture based on 24 hours long real-world data-sets logged in selected outdoor places in NYC.

I was always fascinated with creating visually interesting things based on the data extracted from the real world. During the 2020 lockdown, I finally found some spare time to figure out how to use Arduino for data acquiring and recording. This way, I didn’t have to rely on other people’s data-sets anymore but became able to create my own. 

Each Memopod acts as a cast reflecting changes in lighting, temperature, humidity, and sound level in a certain place in New York City, where the data was recorded, over the course of 24 hours. A minimalistic outer shell contains a “crystal” which is unique for each place and time. Its appearance is determined by the data collected from its surroundings during a period of time.

Just as tree rings are an imprint of the tree’s surroundings during a certain time period, every layer of a Memopod is a visualization of two minutes out of the 24 hours of collected data necessary to create each sculpture

To collect the data I used Arduino, to which I connected to light, weather (temperature, pressure, and humidity), and sound sensors. Together with a battery and an SD-card for data storage, the system was put in a small container which I left for 24 hours in different places in the city to collect data. 

Based on the data collected, 720 layers were generated using Sidefx Houdini (one layer per two minutes), creating a unique “crystal” with its surroundings’ features encoded in it.

Thanks for watching!