Data Engagement

Living visualisations driven by real-time data

Art-meets-utility, we’re guided by data accessibility and transparency. Our live data visualisations include weather, Smart City IoT sensors, sales metrics, web analytics - anything with a live data feed.

There’s plenty of live data “available”. We’re here to make it more accessible by connecting people directly to the source through art and creativity.

Engaging and interacting with the data source while using their imagination, people can truly engage and understand data meaningfully. We’re excited about the applications for education, critical thinking, internal data presentation, marketing activations and of course art itself.

See our example use cases and first projects below. Get in touch at hello@cusp.co.nz to talk projects, commissions or licensing.

Live Weather Data

A deliberately literal use case, this first project has been created to accompany an upcoming music and animated video release. The video on the left shows the visualisation as the live data reaches sunset. The visual elements follow a painterly style to match the music video concept.

A live weather data API controls the animations, thanks to The MetService Point Forecast API.

Animation controls:

  • Wave movement height: controlled by live wave height in Lyttelton.

  • Birds rate of movement: controlled by live wind speed data in Lyttelton.

  • Birds placement on-screen: controlled by live wind direction in Lyttelton.

  • Cloud transparency: controlled by live % cloud coverage in Lyttelton.

  • At the time sunset and sunrise in New Zealand each day, the “Scenes” music video plays.

  • The local time of day in New Zealand controls four visual phases: sunrise, day, sunset, night.

View the full details about the music single on the project page here and watch the live visualisation here!

Concept: Antarctica Data

Animation controls:

  • Speed of stylised ice sheet/waves melting is based on historic sea ice data over time.

  • Speed and appearance of the swirling snow driven by real-time wind speed and wind direction.

  • The sky in the background fed by a camera on location, pointed directly up at the sky. This live image feed could also be processed via video platform Mux to reflect other live data points.

Installation:

  • Suited to an immersive screen environment, wrapping the animation around 4 walls and a ceiling screen.