Worldwide response to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games to be shown online

​A new online artwork for the London  2012 Festival is offering people the opportunity to see what is being said and felt about a sporting event at the moment of triumph or despair thanks to the way it visualises the online digital interactions, such as twitter, as they happen in what is known as the Digital Public Space.
 
Called Emoto, this new digital innovation will enable those feelings to be mapped in a graphic visualisation showing the emotions that the audience is sharing at the precise second the winning goal is scored or a record is broken.

Emoto is part of the London 2012 Festival, the spectacular 12-week nationwide celebration running from 21 June to 9 September 2012, bringing together leading artists from across the world with the very best from the UK.
 
Drew Hemment of FutureEverything who is an artist on the project said: “This will change the way people view the sport by presenting alongside the event real-time information on the global response and conversation in that instant. People will typically view the project on their laptop while the TV is on the sports, or in bars it will be shown on a large screen next to the TV.
 
“It will create a social experience for people watching at home, who will be able to sense the excitement as if they were in the stadium. Here the stadium is the global audience tuned in to London 2012.”
 
Everybody who uses twitter or an online app on their mobile phone is already a part of the Digital Public Space, where online information is shared worldwide. 

This is the theme of the Creative Exchange, a £4m North West consortium launched at a conference on May 16 in Manchester to unite innovative thinkers with the digital and creative industries to create new products and ways of working which will transform our world.
 
The Creative Exchange will bring together creative sector businesses and connect them with digital designers, major corporations and leading researchers in the Arts and Humanities.

The aim is to create new products, experiences and business opportunities which empower people to explore the wealth of information online which is the Digital Public Space.
 
Current collaborators include the BBC and Media City, Microsoft, FutureEverything, Tate Liverpool and more than 30 creative and digital businesses.
 
This FutureEverything project being led by Dr Drew Hemment of the Creative Exchange is an example of the type of exciting project that will come out of the Digital Public Space, where anyone, anywhere, anytime can access, explore and create with digital content.  Increasingly collections of films, photos, all the content and information locked away in our museums, galleries and broadcasters are digitised, as is public information, and user-generated content. This is a vast resource from which we will all benefit.
 
Speakers at the launch event at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester on May 16 included: Bill Thompson who works for the BBC on Digital Public Space,one of the world’s most influential graphic designers Neville Brody and Jo Twist of UK Interactive Entertainment.
 
The new concepts and prototypes which emerge from the work of The Creative Exchange will be tested with the public in real-life situations in March 2013.