What Is It? Is a new column dedicated to decoding the bizarre new things Cornell puts up around campus. Whether decorative or practical, these additions always seem to serve another purpose.

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by: Hannah McGough

The Gates Hall “mood.cloud”

For those of you wondering what exploded inside of Gates Hall, simmer. We’ll try to make sense of this thing before Bill does next week. And no, you can’t eat it. The carefully-coiled wonder is less a knot of candy ropes than it is a human-computer interaction experiment, even though we’re personally convinced it was stolen from Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory (see item #1).

Real use: mood.cloud is the Interaction Design Lab’s LED installation that “dynamically captures and displays the collective ‘mood’ of campus life.” When you tap one of the emotionally-charged images on the cloud’s touch screen display, the mass of lighting responds by illuminating in whichever color palette your selection connotes. Sort of like an aura reader, but for pictures…and people who don’t know that blue means sad.

What it actually looks like:

 

#1) Willy Wonka’s reject confection

What in the whirl-d?

^One of these things is not like the others.

…mood.cloud definitely went down the bad egg chute.

 

#2) Mood bra

Color-coded coitus

If it glows red, you’re doing it wrong.

If it glows green, don’t stop bae.

 

#3) Tangled Christmas lights

Santa’s little helpers have been slacking off.

You better not pout, you better not cry.…Who am I kidding, that’s one unknotting job I want nothing to do with.

Shoulda used a spool!

 

#4) Psychedelic Top Ramen

Cup ‘o Moodles

They say the more colorful the food, the healthier. Taste the rainbow amiright?

 

#5) LED jump rope

The days of the Skip-It are over.

Finally, a toy that’ll shut the kids up (and out of the house until past dark).

She’ll be at it for hours.

 

#6) Tricked-out hammock

Yes I’d like to fall asleep inside a rainbow.

Does mood.cloud come with a white noise dashboard too? Cue the sequence of crickets and soft sea breeze, please.

 

#7) Gary’s trippy rave shell

One more thing to piss off Squidward.

Bikini Bottom just got brighter!

 

 

This piece is not intended to insult the work of the collaborators.

The author can be reached at hannah.mcgough@www.slopemedia.org. If you liked this article, you might also like What Is It? 5 Uses for the Arts Quad Needle.