Janet and I met at TED in 2011.
Her sculptures had this wonderful dynamism.
I'm an artist who works with public space.
I take soft materials and make shapes the size of buildings.
Janet and I'd been talking about ways to create an interactive version of one of these sculptures.
And, Chris Anderson from TED reached out to Janet and said, this is a perfect opportunity
to create, potentially your largest sculpture.
This is the first time my work will be able to allow people to directly influence what
they see.
So, the installation first and foremost is this beautiful net sculpture in the sky, and
then the layers on top of that are added by participants, so we can have hundreds of people
simultaneously connecting with their mobile phones, and allowing people to present themselves
in this dynamic flowing visual that's on the sculpture.
The next generation.
The next level.
Its the next thing.
Everybody is using mobile phones to connect to our server and its using websockets to
stream directly into Chrome where it is then taking all that data and spitting it out to
another Chrome instance which is rendering all the the graphics in real time.
I'm fabricating in the United States on the West Coast in Washington State.
Its an area that has a long fishing industry tradition.
The ropes that form this structure are made of a fiber and its 15 times stronger than
steel.
Its being braided and we are then hand splicing those ropes into this structure.
This has been one of the most challenging installations because its in the middle of
an active city.
We've been installing this every night.
Tightening up the ropes, lifting this it into the air.
There've been a lot of unknowns as we've been trying to get this sculpture in place, everything
from physically the net actually getting caught in a tree on the way up and then plenty of
time trying to untangle and lift it, to the tensioning, to actually moving the sculpture
50 feet to the side at one point.
For years, I've been exploring how to let people become part of the artwork.
And now, with Aaron's interactive art, people can actually draw and paint with light.
They become co-creators with us.
It's been a real pleasure to see the delight and wonder on people's faces as they're participating
and collaborating together to make it work.
I never thought about using my phone this way, at all.
So, today doing it?
Unreal.
It's been such a treat to quietly observe people interacting and becoming part of this
work, painting on it.
This is something you don't expect to encounter on the street.
And it's just something about having your routine broken up.
Looking up at the sky.
Just changing your perspective for a moment.
We've spent so much time, and the team has spent so much effort making this a reality.
And then you get this payback of seeing people's faces and smiles and delight.
I really like the aspect that it's a very temporal and timely piece.
It comes and then it's gone.
Unnumbered Sparks: this idea that we're all here converging on this space, having this
beautiful experience, and then dissipating.