What is it?
Excitement is a simple arduino and processing application that displays the world's excitement by polling twitter, and displaying the results as an interactive visualization.
Rationale
I wanted to explore the possibilities of joining a very immediate, tactile interaction with one more abstract to create a piece that is organic, yet meaningful. The immediate interaction—that of the button being pressed—is reflected on the computer screen through the movements of a series of moving dots, which seem to get 'excited' and start swirling around in a big 'cloud'. An led lights up, confirming your interaction, and brightens as you press the button down longer, provoking you to watch and see what happens. The abstract aspect, is a constant polling of twitter for tweets with the word 'exciting'. Each time a tweet is posted, the second led blinks, and a new dot enters the screen.
Installation
To get things working, take a look at the diagrams under the 'wiring' folder to hook up your Arduino. Then upload your code to it, and finally, open the processing.pde and click run!
License
Of course, licensed under the MIT license.