Open-Source Empathy

The Prometheus Clock provides users with the experience of being inside the head of Prometheus, the Greek god of fire. Bearing a constant mental stream of man’s experiences affected Prometheus, a titan, to the extent that he empathized more with humanity rather than his own kind. The Prometheus Clock compiles the latest content added to YouTube in real time, creating a visual barometer of human experience. Each cell on the geodesic dome represents one human experience, but together create a moment-to-moment snapshot of life on planet Earth.

The 14 ft geodesic dome was constructed from steel tubing, and projection scrim. Below the dome sits a projector attached to a computer running a custom built OpenFrameworks application. We used MadMapper to isolate each video to each cell of the dome.