Julius von Bismarck, Benjamin Maus, Richard Wilhelmer: Fühlometer (Monumental Interactive Smiley)

Fuehlometer (Feel-o-meter) is an interactive art installation that shows the mood of a city by displaying it in the form of a monumental Smiley. The system allows to read emotions out of random people’s faces. The faces are analyzed by sophisticated software (contributed by the Fraunhofer Institut). The obtained mood data are then stored on a server and processed by the smiley to visualize the emotions in real-time.

The system has been developed as joint project by the artists Julius von Bismarck, Benjamin Maus, and Richard Wilhelmer. They already realized a much respected media installation at the Gasometer in Berlin-Schöneberg in 2008. For their participation in the summer group show Provinz on Lindau-Island, they installed their interactive installation in and at Lindau-Island’s lighthouse. The emotions are captured by a digital camera that is focused on the faces of the people standing in a specific area on the lakeside. A computer analyzes the photos and sends the results (happy, sad or indifferent) to the giant smiley on top of the lighthouse.

Julius von Bismarck, Benjamin Maus, Richard Wilhelmer: Fühlometer / Provinz – Eine Ausstellung im Sommer 2010. Lindau, August 8, 2010.

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