I finally visited the digital art wall at the Portland airport

I was waiting for a flight last Tuesday and walked past this huge screen near gate C5. It was showing a live animation of the weather outside, but drawn in real time like a digital painting. The artist's name and software they used, TouchDesigner, was in a small corner. I stood there for like 15 minutes just watching the rain patterns get drawn. Has anyone else seen a public digital art piece that used live data like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_sam3d ago

Oh man, that reminds me of a weird one I saw that used local 911 call data (just the types, not the details) to make these pulsing shapes on a building. It was oddly pretty for such a stressful data source. Kinda made you think about the city's hidden rhythm, you know?

lily703d agoMost Upvoted

Yeah I did a thing with live weather data once, mapping wind speed to sound pitch and rainfall to drum beats. It was super simple code but hearing the storm build in real time was wild. People just stood there with umbrellas listening to the park.

the_spencer3d ago

That TouchDesigner software seems perfect for live data art. I saw a similar piece in Chicago that used train arrival times to change colors on a sculpture. What kind of data do you think would make the coolest public art?