Overnight
View from Stone Arch Bridge
Overnight is a realtime portrait of Minneapolis at night shown at Northern Spark 2012. A sequence of five visualizations, Overnight was projected onto the Mill City Silos, turning the disused structures into containers of data about the city. Two live streams were synchronized with three historic data sets and visualized in realtime from sunset to sunrise. The visualizations were accompanied by a generative soundtrack also driven by the data.
Projection on silos.
The five data streams shown are:
- Conversation: text from local, relevant tweets
- Streamflow: the flow of the Mississippi and nearby tributaries relative to their annual maximum
- Transit: ridership and vehicle counts
- Atmosphere: current temperature, wind speed, wind direction, atmospheric pressure, and humidity
- Crowds: pedestrian counts from two locations in downtown Minneapolis
Installation timelapse with data-driven audio (headphones recommended)
Each column's content density is determined by data availability. Columns with high sample rates show more elements at a glance, allowing viewers time to see each sample and also compare them to other recent samples. Columns with low sample rates (< 1 sample : 15 minutes) show one sample at a time. The vertical position of the sample indicates how long ago it was measured, with the freshest data always visible up top, and older data gradually moving to the bottom of the silo and disappearing.
Software rendering of visualizations
I collaborated with Lauren McCarthy on the original proposal and development of Overnight. Chris Wicks contributed sound design and programming. Extra thanks go to Steve Dietz, Dave Schroeder, Andrea Steudel, and everyone at Northern Spark.
We programmed the visuals for Overnight in C++ and OpenGL using Cinder. The sound was programmed in Chuck. The two components spoke to each other using OSC.
Overnight was commissioned by Northern Lights.mn for the Northern Spark festival with support by Eyeo and the National Endowment for the Arts. For the festival, it was called Bumps in the Night, because everything needs a working title.
