Mobility Tracking

An installation about mobility that tracked the mobility of its own visitors.

Mobility Tracking was a real-time data visualisation that measured the density and flow of visitors in each of the six cubes of the Audi Urban Future Award 2012 exhibition, held at the Hasköy Spinning Factory as part of the first Istanbul Design Biennial (11–26 October 2012). Five cubes showed competing architects' visions of mobility in their regions; the sixth presented the Audi Urban Future Initiative itself.

Wide-lens cameras mounted on the scaffolding photographed each space every two seconds and sent the images over a wireless network to software that separated moving people from the background. Rather than counting individual visitors, the system read the mass and the flow — how long people lingered and where they gathered — and drew it as shifting red and green points on a large screen at the entrance.

Conceived by the Istanbul artist network Nerdworking with Plato Media Lab, the installation was produced and calibrated in just seven days, written entirely in Processing as five sketches that talk to one another.