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Greyworld are a group of london based artists who have produced a number of beautiful and subtle pieces of interactive architecture. Above is their piece The Source, installed in the main atrium of the new London Stock Exchange in July 2004. A cube of 9x9x9 (729 in total) spherical balls are suspended on strings that stretch 32 metres up to the top of the main atrium of the newly designed building. These balls, controlled by a computer running Python scripts, can reposition themselves independently of each other, forming dynamic shapes and fluid-like motions that reflects the nature of the stock market itself. Each morning, upon the opening of the London Stock Exchange, the balls awake from their cube arrangement and begin to form patterns. Similarly, at the end of each day’s trading, the balls fall back into their cube arrangement, and an animated arrow is shown using the blue LEDs inside the balls to show how the stock market performed on that particular day.

Check out Chris O’Sheas interview with Andrew Shoben of Greyworld.