The Mood of the Sunlight: Visualization of the Sunlight Data for Public Art

The application of data visualization in public art attracts increasing attention. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a visualization method for sunlight data collected over a long period of time with an industrial camera. The proposed method makes use of the saturation and value information of collected sunlight image data in Hue Saturation Value color model to show the variation of the mood of the sunlight. Specifically, we create visual patterns with a rotating planet gear, which has an intuitively consistent geometric meaning with HSV color model and the planetary motion. Due to the variation of the sunlight data over time, the generated visual pattern presents a periodic variation that corresponds to the changing mood of the sunlight. Furthermore, we also use the sunlight data to generate music as another form of data representation. Two public artworks have been created with the above visualization and auralization methods and displayed on an exhibition held at China Resources Tower, Shenzhen, China. This work is a typical practice of creating public installations with data visualization technology, giving a glimpse into the many ways science and art intersect.