//January 2019
Video capture (00:03:32) of Processing sketch TWITTERSTORM that works with Twitter API to display Tweets in real-time, returning results based on preset hashtags.
The banner (projected in white, not red as seen here) was used as part of a two-part interactive installation in In The Dark exhibition, Cello factory, London, January 2019.
The hashtags can be varied but this run of the code used #brexit #trump #cat #banana #cellonews
In the live version running in the exhibition (this video being pre-recorded 6/ 01/2019) the hashtag #cellonews displayed visitor’s live Tweets in the gallery space.
Twitterstorm is loosely based on artist Jenny Holzer’s Truisms:
Holzer began creating these works in 1977, when she was a student in an independent study program. She hand-typed numerous “one liners,” or Truisms, which she has likened, partly in jest, to a “Jenny Holzer’s Reader’s Digestversion of Western and Eastern thought.” She typeset the sentences in alphabetical order and printed them inexpensively, using commercial printing processes. She then distributed the sheets at random and pasted them up as posters around the city. Her Truisms eventually adorned a variety of formats, including T-shirts and baseball caps.
moma website
Viewed in the modern day, Truisms reads like an insistent, torrential twitter Feed
elephant.art website
Twitterstorm will appear in future exhibitions using different permutations and is currently a work in progress.
Thanks to Tim Pickup for help with coding this work.