Touch of warmth is an art installation placed in multiple cities around the world, enabling people to give and receive warmth from one other.
We aim to place an internet-connected
wall installation in popular public spaces in 6 big cities. These walls would be open for the public to touch.
Happiness
Tarika Jain | Kavinish Panther | Eileen Wang | Rahul Sekar
​
LEDs light up in
sequence to show
that the heat is being
recorded and received
Receive Warmth
eg. 100F
(via heating element in the wall communicating someone else’s recorded body temperature)
The heat source’s country flag lights up
It will, therefore, invite a range of communities to share their body warmth by the touch of a hand and their warmth would be recorded as an analog value which would be received by another human in a different part of the world.
We want to collect and share as much warmth feedback as possible, so it is important to place the wall in a highly foot-trafficked place and therefore places like Times Square.
Visual cues such as the brick texture and copper patches on the wall will also be present on the ground, leading people to approach and engage with the installation to seek comfort.
1. The visitor of the installation will place a hand on the copper plate labeled "Send Warmth!" on the wall.
2. While the warmth of the visitor's palm is being recorded, a series of LED lights light up from above the copper plate, indicating that recording is in progress. The LED lights will light up in the direction of the second copper plate (receiving end), where the visitor can feel the warmth of another's hand.
3. The warmth will be present for 1 minute. While the copper plate is warmed, a neopixel above will show the colors of the flag from which the warmth is from.
Foamcore wall with imbedded copper plates
connected to FSR touch sensor(recording side) and 12V Peltier(receiving side), 6 LEDs and a Neopixel
All components are connected in a 2 part circuit
containing 2 particle argon boards behind the wall.
The peltier (heating source) would randomly select a temperature stored in the cloud and set it as its target temperature for every time a person interacts with the wall.
It will then use a PID(Proportional, Integral, Derivative) algorithm that is connected to the peltier function in the code to get the peltier temperature from room temperature/current temperature to the target temperature by constantly correcting the error between the initial and target value.
Record Warmth
eg. 97F
(body temperature)
Interpersonal Connection
Longer lives
+
Lower rates of depression and anxiety