Make:

Bill writes in with a fun art installation that gets bigger the more it is blogged...-

"Blogged" is an interactive installation artwork and one day net event dealing with the concept of being 'blogged'. It attempts to pop 6 feet in diameter red balloon by using traffic from blogs linking to http://billshackelford.com/home/portfolio_blogged.

It runs on Thursday May 31, 2007 live from The Ohio State University Art and Technology show "Digescape". During this one day event I will suggest a link for consideration to this installation to a number of blogs in hopes that they will blog it on their sites and include a link back to this page (http://billshackelford.com/home/portfolio_blogged). My web site will then monitor the traffic coming from these blogs and run an air compressor for 1 second for each visit, filling up and then pop the 6 feet in diameter red balloon live on the web. Visitors will be able to monitor installation with a live video feed where they can watch and listen to the air compressor fill up the balloon and then pop it if enough traffic is received.

The idea comes from a previous experience when my artwork was fortunate to be blogged by several blogs. I found it interesting to see how quickly artwork spread from blog to blog. It was also interesting to see as time passed and the posts about my artwork would fade into the blog archives, that the traffic to my site dried up almost as fast as it arrived. I think Blogged expresses the joy I felt when my artwork was blogged by other sites with the filling of the balloon with air and then the dose of reality that hits when the traffic dries up with the potential popping of the balloon.

How It Works

Blogged works by counting a visit for each unique IP address and URL referral combination to this page. For example if you followed a link from the blog Bit Babble to this page, then your visit would be counted. If you went back to Bit Babble again and clicked a link to this page, then your visit would not be counted the second time. But if you where to click on a link to this page from a different blog other than Bit Babble, then that visit would be counted too. Other blogs linking to this page are listed to the right.

The visits are logged in a MYSQL database and then used to determine how long to run the air compressor based on the total number of visits. Then the Parallax Basic Stamp with a Netburner network adapter receives the running time from the database and then switches the air compressor on using a solid state relay for the given running time filling up the balloon.