SMART looked for a way to reduce the numbers of accidents caused by people not waiting at pedestrian crossings to change to green light.

While working at Minivegas in Amsterdam they “were charged with coming up with a way of breathing life into the famous red man through the medium of dance".

We developed a series of LED panels that would fit seamlessly into the existing traffic light casings in Lisbon. By fitting the LED panels with a light sensor and installing them over the original lights, the panels would turn from red to green in perfect sync with the actual lights.
Kinect sensors inside the cube captured their movement and transferred it into the movements of the red LED man. At that same moment, people waiting to cross would hear the music piped through hidden speakers on the road side and notice the normally static red man in the traffic light suddenly begin to boogie down – with the very same moves the person in the cube was doing.

Made with openFrameworks,  Raspberry Pi and Kinect.

Credits:

Agency: BBDO
Film Director: Marten Persiel
Installation: Minivegas
Film Production: BigFish
Producer: Brian Bourke
Creative Director: Andrew Watson
Software & Hardware: Patrick Fürst
Music App Development: Marek Janiszewski