during my artist-in-residency at machinesroom in london, back in 2015, i started to develop an instrument that could be controlled by using twitter as its source of interaction.
the hummingbird was the first iteration of this idea. it used the user id numbers of the last person to send me a tweet to create a melody, which it then played through a series of motors/strings controlled by relays.
This work was first tested with the public at the tate moderns turbine hall festival.
This led to almost 10 years of experimentation and evolution of using twitter as a source of data and interactivity for a series of different installations.
These are just some of them. others included instruments that were for live-performance, so audience members could interact. Some were using twitter to create data for coded music generation.
Hope vs Fear
This installation used live streamed data from twitter to count the number of times the words ‘hope or ‘fear’ were used in a tweet. It would then use that data to compare frequencies in a specific timeframe and then play a melody based on whether the twitter was feeling more hopeful, or more fearful.
It was showcased at the Tate Moderns Tate Lates event in 2020.
It is a shame that this project can’t be taken forwards anymore. I am looking into alternative sources of world-wide data streaming and also easy to access audience participation.
Vulpes Labs 