We have seen some great interactive, even public art installations over the past year, but the Smiley Face installation on a tower (Fühlometer: Feel-o-meter), created by Julius von Bismarck, Benjamin Maus, and Richard Wilhelmer is one of the best. Their Fühlometer is fueled by a digital camera on the ground, monitoring the moods of casual passerbys.

What we read on the video’s YouTube page is that after the digital camera takes the picture, it is passed to a system that “allows to read emotions out of random people’s faces. The faces are analyzed by sophisticated software (contributed by the Fraunhofer Institut). The obtained mood data are then stored on a server and processed by the smiley to visualize the emotions in real-time.” Then the tower Feel-o-Meter, that itself is 26′ feet tall, shows whether you are happy, sad, or indifferent.