While New York is home to many world-renowned and historic art institutions, a first-of-its-kind museum opened its doors in the Financial District last week. The Museum of Feelings is the first museum that can “feel” the emotions of its visitors and the surrounding environment, and reflect those moods in its color-changing exterior.
The Museum houses five galleries, where each installation represents a different mood. In the “Optimism” room, visitors use a reflective pass card to activate sensors that trigger audio and light effects in the space. The “Joyful” zone features a forest of green LED vines that hang from the ceiling and reflect the mirror floor below. The “Calm” exhibit simulates the sensations of walking among the clouds, replete with a plush carpet and fog machine. The “Exhilarated” room acts as a virtual kaleidoscope and the “Invigorated” gallery surrounds visitors with 3-D halos that reacts to their motions.
The exhibit is sponsored by Glade, the scent manufacturer, and accordingly, each room has a different smell. By incorporating smell into the visual, auditory and tactile aspects of the exhibit, the museum is appealing to New Yorkers' sensory experiences—namely, their ever-changing moods.
While at its core the Museum of Feelings is an extravagant marketing campaign, the pop-up exhibit’s luminescent and dynamic aesthetic has become viral across residents' social media feeds.
Creative studio Radical Media created the Museum in conjunction with Glade, and gathers a digital pulse on the city’s mood by scraping social media for real-time data. This information specifically mixes local news trends, such as the weather and stock prices, with the overall tone of New Yorkers on Twitter to assemble a color-coded mood at the museum.
The Museum of Feelings also collaborated with Twitter to generate a changing profile picture filter called ‘MoodLens,’ which adjusts based on a user’s feelings. A ‘MoodLens’ is essentially an emotional selfie, that changes color according to a user’s biometrics (voice, body movements and pulse rate), the local weather, and regional social media sentiments.
The Museum of Feelings is open to the public in Brookfield Place until December 15th.
