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Photo: Dew Tour


The Inertia

The dark room was illuminated by a glow of soft pink and blue, lighting up the rows of wooden skate decks hanging from the wall in a parallel masterpiece. The colors moved like lava, warping into different abstract shapes as they combined and fell together to make new visual eye candy. The liquidation of color displayed on the boards was beautiful and the emotions behind it were especially significant.

Mountain Dew and Lightwave collaborated at this year’s Dew Tour in Long Beach to create an interactive art display called “The Art of Doing.” The exhibit’s purpose was to demonstrate the intertwining worlds of skating and artistic expression, produced by innovative technology to properly display the feeling of skating into a form of visual personal expression. The high concept gallery featured six unique canvases that displayed a different athlete’s individual feelings of doing, by monitoring certain vital statistics while they skated at the event facilities.

According to a recent study by Lightwave, about 80% of sponsored Dew Tour athletes believe their skateboarding is a form of artistic expression as much as it is their profession and passion. Therefore, Lightwave used analytics like psychological responses to thrills of skating, such as heart rate, changes in skin temperature, and motion to represent each skater individually.  Their goal was to accurately represent emotional data and then display it in an alluring display.

Photo: Dew Tour

“This year’s Dew Tour provides an exemplary use case of our technology because we’re able to reveal deep emotional insights into the thrill of competition and visualize them in a brand new way,” said Rana June, CEO of Lightwave in a press release.

Top Dew riders such as Curren Caples and Sean Malto agreed to participate by wearing a device that measured their heart rate, blood volume pulse, skin temperature, electrodermal activity, and motion. This biofeedback was transmitted to an engine which was analyzed using neuroscience techniques like measuring orienting responses and heart rate variability. Using this data, they were able to portray the emotional aspects of boarding through a code based artwork.

Guests were also participants. After the art displays were viewed, the reactions of guests were recorded and turned into their own artwork that was displayed on a custom wall of skateboards.  This first of its kind exhibit blended the exhilaration of skateboarding with the beauty and simplicity of colors, swirling to create emotional experiences everyone and anyone can enjoy.

Photo: Dew Tour

 
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