ITP 30: Build a show in a day (Part III)

Michael Doherty
2011

What are you working on?
I’m part of a group of people working on TweetGrass. People can send in twitter messages about things that they do that are related to sustainability, something as simple as recycling a bottle, for instance. They add a hashtag and the messages are picked up by our processing application. The application makes a cloud which grows with more and more tweets. When it gets big enough it turns into rain on the screen, which them turns into physical rain under the screen that waters wheat grass. There are is also gold leaf that users can put on the wheat grass box. By putting the gold leaf on, they are making a pledge to support sustainability. When they tweet, they do something sustainable. One is a pledge, the other is actual action.

So if no one tweets, the wheat grass dies. Is this a play on guilt?
Sort of. If you recycle a bottle you don’t see the benefit of recycling the bottle, you just know there is a benefit., This creates a feedback loop. It’s not immediate, but you know that if the wheat grass is still alive, you’re doing something. Also seeing other people’s tweets might give you guilt about not doing something yourself.

How long have you been working?
-We’ve been working since around 10am. We had a few hang-ups with wrong parts but I think that’s all being resolved.

When do you think you’ll finish?
It’s almost 2 now? I’m hoping by midnight, but that’s probably a very hopeful estimate.