Imagine that it’s a nice sunny day and you decide to go to the park. You sit down on a bench to take in the scenery and do some people watching when you find you’re the one being watched–on Twitter.This is what Chris McNicholl, a Comber, Northern Ireland-based designer, is doing with his TweetingSeat. McNichol describes the bench as “an interactive park bench which is designed to explore the potential for connecting digital and physical communities.”
When someone sits down on the bench, two cameras snap a picture. One of them is mounted on the bench itself and takes a picture of the surrounding area, while the second takes photo of the person sitting down on the bench. Both of these pictures are posted to a Twitter feed.
The cameras a mounted in replicas of the famous Twitter bird logo. The project is an interesting hybrid of the physical and digital world, though I could see McNicholl running into some privacy issues with people who don’t expect to have their pictures posted to the Internet. This will be fun for people who are avid Tweeters and people who are generally exhibitionists anyway.
For another connection between Twitter and the real world, read our post on the Sweet Tweet Twitter Towel. For a considerably less friendly park bench, check out our post on the Pay & Sit Bench with Spikes.
Update Video: Thanks Andy Barratt!
Via: Chris McNicholl /Flickr
