Summary:
This installation/network artwork has been accepted for ISEA2006 at the San Jose Museum of Art and is in an early phase of production. The installation is inspired by the common wearable “mood ring,” which displays the emotional condition as color hue. At the request of remote and installation viewers, this project utilizes varying cultural color models, a search engine and data processing to find the color mood of a current public issue represented by Internet news. The color is then transferred to bays of colored ceiling lights. Viewers are immersed in “mood” lighting that is both a gift and representation of current public conditions.

Net-Gift Mood Systems: This project represents one of three Internet controlled atmospheric mood systems conceived. Each represents a variation of net-gift or net transfer of remote concern translated telematically into spacial lighting and airflow. The installations transform the directives of surveillance, home automation and open-sourced Internet applications into possibilities for network participation in architectural mood. In the process image is translated into immersive airflow, news is translated into light temperature and an individual design sensibility becomes public color space. The works explore the possibilities of redirecting economies of control into caring or gift economies. Distant optical or virtual relationships merge with tangible corporeal room conditions.

Installation:
The online portion of the installation will consist of a Web site designed to elicit a simple question from users about the status of a current public issue of concern. Once this is submitted, the search engine retrieves key words from a Google NEWS search associated with the public issue “mood.” The user then chooses a cultural color model, which aligns the chosen color with the public issue “mood.” This color is then translated to a server in the destination installation space, which translates the designated color to a DMX controlled system of LED lights projected on the exhibition space ceiling. The entire colorcast of the installation space is then changed to this color. Online participants will be able to see the calculation process and its results in the room via webcam. When online users are not engaged in mood selections, the system will automatically search the web for public issue “moods” to continuously change the colorcast.

Production Plan:
The design of the specific system has been charted; the operating software and hardware components have been researched and located. The next phase of the project is to complete the basic interactive components. While I will determine and create most of the aesthetic designs of the interface and much of the interlocking systems, the following programming and software components need to be created in a process of collaborative commissioning of programmers.
    - A search engine which searches news stories for mood oriented keywords
    - A word translator linking keywords to a particular color hue expressed in RGB and then sent as CGI commands to a
      remote server.
    -CGI commands to trigger Perl commands at the installation server, which cause DMX controller to control bays of LED,
     color lighting.


Budget:
(1) LanBox-LCE mini DMX controller $405.68
(2) (2) Axis 207 Network Cameras $ 545.90
LED Theatre Light Rental #2200.00
(50 hrs) Computer consulting and programming $1750.00
Total: $4,901.58
Grants Currently Obtained
Scholarly Research Grant, Pace University: $1500.00