Is it Art?

I think this is a fascinating interactive website that could be art... or it could be an interesting way to quantify feelings... or it could just be pretty... or it could be a complete waste of time (but I don't think so) or... you be the judge and check it out for yourself!!!

www.wefeelfine.org

So these 2 guys (Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar) decided to "harvest" human feelings from blogs all over the world. They took the feelings and gave them colors and shapes depending on whether the feelings were happy or sad and how strong they were. The shapes bounce all over the screen (Madness) and you can click on them to see what they mean - the blog that matches that feeling (sometimes it has a picture linked to it) will post at the top of the screen. These guys have created a database of millions of feelings - and made the database pretty! What a cool way to share information!!

In addition to displaying feelings in Madness (random bouncing shapes with colors), they have also created visual displays of their database that include montages of pictures, quivering mounds of feelings and metrics (numbers) linked with colors. All of this is interactive.

I know this is not what you think of as typical artwork, but it's a pretty interesting and a fresh way to show a database of information. I find myself mesmerized by the Madness display and the crazy spinning scene of colors.

Couldn't the mass of human feelings consolidated into one interactive display be considered artwork?
Enjoy the Madness!!