Social Soul

Lauren Lee McCarthy and Kyle McDonald

Social Soul is an immersive digital experience inspired by the question: How does it feel to be inside someone else's social stream? The installation brings to life a user's Twitter stream in a larger-than-life structure where their social media profile is on display in a 360-degree stream of monitors, mirrors and sound.







The experience starts with the stream of the person visiting, it then uses a custom algorithm to match participants with other TED attendees and speakers, displaying their social stream. After exiting, users and their connected "Soul Mate" receive a tweet encouraging offline connections and conversation. The entire project uses seven different languages of code to handle everything from scripting to styling. The sound is a mixture of generative audio and music composed in Live.

Created for the TED Conference with Delta Air Lines and MKG. A second version was created for Samsung 837, in collaboration with Black Egg.