There’s a Museum of Feelings in NYC, Using Real-Time Data to Serve as City’s “Mood Ring”

There have been a flurry of interesting pop-up museums and art installations sprouting up in New York City, but the recent Museum of Feelings is quite different for one reason: it’s essentially the city’s mood ring.

The Museum of Feelings, located in Brookfield Place (already filled with art exhibits like Canstruction  and Luminaries) and run by S. C. Johnson & Son, prides itself in being “the first museum that reacts to emotions– and turns them into art.” Its facade changes color with New York City’s mood using social media and real-time data from sources like the New York Stock Exchange, local news, weather reports and flight delays. It uses other data like individual heart beats and Galvanic Skin Response to create emotion-reflecting selfies for visitors.

The museum contains five galleries called “experience zones” where visitors can use their senses to explore their emotions, and each room has a Glade scent to encourage visitors to connect special experiences with smells.

This free installation runs until December 26 at 230 Vesey Street at Brookfield Place in Battery Park City, and is open Monday to Saturday from 11am-9pm and Sunday from 11am-7pm.

In the meantime, you can head over to the exhibit’s official website and take a “MoodLens”– a creative feature that combines an image of yourself with the tone of your voice to make a selfie with different color hues to reflect your sensed mood. Then, go ahead and post it to the museum’s “Living Gallery.”

Next, check out 15 Art Installations and Urbanism Exhibits Not to Miss in NYC December 2015 and the Museum of Food and Drink Pop-Up Lab in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Get in touch with the author @sgeier97