I recently had the good fortune to visit the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit at MoMA. It’s on exhibit until May 12, and I recommend that everyone interested in dynamic media and emerging technologies go see it. If you are reading this blog, that means you. (The image above is Jim Lambie’s installation on the first floor of the museum — literally, on the floor — and is not part of the design exhibit.)

I found out about the exhibit in a roundabout way. I was doing some research on the Make Controller Kit, an open-source hardware device that I’m considering for future projects. That site points to a number of great projects made with the kit, my favorite of which is Lightweeds by Simon Heijdens. Heijdens’ site mentioned that his work was on display at MoMA, so I went to the museum simply to view his project, with no idea that I’d also see a number of other phenomenal projects.

Lightweeds is a brilliant concept: Project lifelike “weeds” onto interior walls of a space, or what Heijdens calls the “artificial” space of a gallery. Collect live data from the environment outside the building (temperate, sunlight, wind velocity), and make the projected weeds grow and behave in response to that data, thereby establishing a connection between the natural and built environments. Here’s a close-up of one “weed” blowing in the “wind”:

Another highlight is the piece I Want You To Want Me, by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar, who I recognized immediately as the same folks who brought us We Feel Fine.

I Want You To Want Me mines the Internet, looking for people who themselves are looking for someone else: a date, a partner, a spouse. The touch-screen interface represents each individual as a balloon which can be tapped to reveal something about who that person is (e.g. Mike, age 29, in Philadephia) and what he’s looking for (e.g. “a hot babe” or “a man my age I can really settle down with”).

The project is extremely engaging. Users’ innate voyeuristic instincts make the content interesting and relatable, and the balloons (data) can be manipulated through multiple views and filters, which enables the discovery of people who may want each other in real life. Both of these characteristics were inherited from the We Feel Fine project, but I Want You To Want Me employs far-superior graphics and a touch interface. (As an installation, it doesn’t have to struggle with the limitations of a web-based distribution platform.)

The absolute highlight of the exhibit, though, is Shadow Monsters, an installation by Philip Worthington. You enter a small room with a very bright light on the wall behind you, and your “shadow” is “cast” on the opposite wall. The shadow, however, is augmented in real-time to suggest how it would be seen in the mind of a child who’s been told to sleep, but can’t stop worrying about monsters under the bed. While your projected shadow grows horns, teeth, scary eyeballs and shaggy hair, the space is activated with growling, grunting, and gargling — the sounds of hungry monsters preparing to devour little children. My favorite moment was when I made an alligator-like shadow puppet with my arms, and it grew large teeth and spat in disgust toward the opposite wall. (There was audio for the spitting, too.)

Not to brag, but that last bit of computationally enhanced performance art drew a brief standing ovation from a crowd of onlookers. You see, with Shadow Monsters, there are the shadows, and there are the people casting the shadows, both of which could be considered performers, since they both contribute something to the space. And then there are the people outside the space looking in, watching the performance.

But, in reality, the onlookers are part of the performance, too. They unwittingly play the part of the little child, peeking out from under the covers, afraid and confused, unable to explain what’s real and what’s not, and unwilling to get out of bed (and into the space) until they can figure out what’s really going on. My theory is that I drew a few claps because I wasn’t afraid to “get out from under the covers” and really explore the system. (I was fairly confident that it would not actually eat me.) I raised my arms, stuck out my legs, made enclosed shadow-spaces (which is how to trigger eyeballs, I discovered), and did a number of other physical actions that would have gotten me kicked out of the museum, had I not been within that installation space. But I didn’t care, because I wanted to know how the algorithm worked, and besides, my attention was on the large projection in front of me, so I wasn’t thinking about how silly I looked until people started clapping.

I will end with the beginning. Most visitors to the exhibit won’t even notice the first piece, Genomic Cartography by Ben Fry. It’s a sequence of human DNA, visualized as extremely small, pink and gray letters, printed on a white wall. But the exhibit title and introduction are set on top of the piece, so it looks like just an interesting background.

I took away three profound insights from this exhibit:

1. The fact that the Museum of Modern Art, a venerable institution, staged this exhibit completely validated my decision to study dynamic media. This is absolutely the future, and absolutely what I want to do.

2. About half of the dynamic installations, including Shadow Monsters, were built using Processing. Awesome. Again, I feel like I am totally going in the right direction here, and I am inspired by the high quality of work that can be done with the Processing environment.

3. Most of the exhibited artists and designers are within a few years of my age. And they have stuff in MoMA. That gives me hope and also scares me. I better get crackin’.

I cannot recommend a visit to this exhibit highly enough. If you can’t make it to New York, the exhibit’s website is a nightmare to navigate, but at least you can read about all of the projects there.

As part of my research, I’m looking into the psychology of crowds, and what makes some “crowd” experiences positive, and others negative. I had an experience recently that Joe suggested I document here.

In line at Boston Logan, I waited impatiently with hundreds of other people, bracing myself for the mad rush that happens just before and after the metal detector. You used to be able to put your bags on the conveyor belt and walk through, but now getting through security involves no fewer than 13 separate steps, depending on how you count them:

1. Remove any liquids and laptops from your luggage.
2. Place your luggage on the conveyor belt.
3. Place your laptop on the conveyor belt, in its own bin.
4. Remove your shoes.
5. Remove your jacket.
6. Remove your belt (if any) and empty your pockets of everything — wallet, keys, change — except for your boarding pass! You will need that in a moment.
7. Place your shoes, jacket, belt, and pocket contents in a bin on the conveyor belt.
8. Add to that bin a small plastic, resealable bag which contains any liquids or lotions that you want to take on the plane with you. Oh, and of those items, not one may exceed 3 fluid ounces. (Note that this step requires extensive preparation prior to arriving at the airport.)
9. Wait until a TSA agent gives you a blank stare, which is your indication to proceed through the metal detector.
10. Get scolded by the TSA agent for not holding on to your boarding pass, as instructed in step 6.
11. Deflect nasty looks given to you by the 8,000 travelers in line behind you as everyone waits for your boarding pass to be retrieved from the gray bin.
12. TSA agent now allows you to pass, having verified that you are in possession of a little scrap of paper that any 5-year-old could have mocked up in MacPaint.
13. Collect all your belongings, repack your bag, apply anti-fungal foot cream (aerosol varieties prohibited), get dressed in front of strangers who now hate you, and proceed to gate.

That would be stressful enough. But add to it general anxiety about flight, lack of decent food, sleep, hydration, and other physical and emotional stresses associated with travel, and most people’s general mood at this point, in the security line, is one of unpleasant anticipation.

So I’m back at Logan, it’s early, and I just want to make sure I don’t miss my flight. I have prepared for all 13 steps the night before. My lotions, liquids and gels are apportioned and sealed. My shoes are untied, ready for instant slip-off. I’m trying not to make eye contact with anyone, assuming they all feel the same way — grumpy and distressed — but it turns out they don’t.

I only know that because Mr. TSA himself decided we needed a little refresher course. He approaches, walking alongside us, lifting a number of large bottles of verboten shampoos and suntan lotion into the air. He is literally yelling: “THIS IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO YOUR LIQUIDS. YOU MUST PUT ALL YOUR LIQUIDS INTO A SMALL PLASTIC BAG.” He is five feet away from my face and yelling directly into it. The corridor is about 20 feet wide; I think he could use his indoor voice and communicate more effectively. But he continues down the line, hitting all 13 items on our to-do lists at full volume.

Finally, having reached the last passenger, he shuts up, turns around, and starts heading back to his post. And that’s when the horrifically magical moment happened: Someone said “thank you.” Thank you! This verbally abusive authority figure has, in my eyes, been nothing but rude, obnoxious, and insulting, lecturing us about things that we should already know. But someone thanked him for what I interpreted as abuse. And then another person thanked him. And another. And soon, once about ten people had said “thank you,” he felt obligated to respond with “you’re welcome.”

Did this people think he was doing them a favor? Did they think he was a hero? Have TSA agents been elevated to the mythical level of firefighters and first responders? “You can do no wrong. You are keeping our country safe. Thank you for everything.”

It was fascinating to me that anyone would respond this way, and that after the first “thank you,” that others followed. What does that say about the crowd’s dynamic relating to this authority figure? How can the collective emotion be so different from my own? And how can this sort of interaction inform our approach to emotional designs?