Planet Hype, 2015

exhibition design

Planet Hype is an exhibition on display from 3 October 2015 to 13 March 2016 at the MOTI – Museum of the Image, Breda. It introduces the phenomenon of the online hype by juxtaposing recent media hypes with the work of 9 contemporary designers and artists.

A wall surrounding the actual exhibition space creates a sense of controlled serendipity by presenting 71 hypes embedded in their various modifications. A surface of 60 x 4,4 meters is covered by a total of 8.681 images that gravitate towards one another and form clusters of associations. In their centers, the source material that started the hypes is exhibited, and takes the form of a large TV screen or a panel.

A purpose-built software first fetched image material related to the hypes from sources such as Google, Instagram or Twitter. Then it tagged the images with labels describing both the actual objects as well as the subject represented on the picture. The tags were used to calculate the similarity and therefore the attraction between individual images, which determined the final layout.

Seen from a greater distance, the Planet Hype installation overwhelms the audience by generating an oversized Facebook wall that captures ephemeral by nature hype moments.

The Instagotwi code for the Planet Hype image scraper is shared on GitHub.

More information on the online back-up of the Planet Hype website.

design in collaboration with: Roosje Klap; programming: Michał Ejdys and Amir Houieh; 3D modeling: Edgar Savisaar