PROJECT 04 / 2026 / ACTIVE / NYC
ACG by SLBH
ACG by SLBH is an ongoing applied research series that turns affective computation into tangible experience through light, color, presence, and sensory systems.
01 / CONCEPT
Affective computation, made physical.
ACG by SLBH is where the lab’s affective research becomes a tangible public experience. The project applies the computational logic of Affective Computational Geometry to real-world environments, translating emotional data into visible, spatial, and sensory forms.
The initial storefront activation uses light as the primary rendering method. But ACG is not only a light installation. It is an ongoing applied research series for testing how affective systems can be experienced through color, presence, space, scent, participation, and public programming.
STOREFRONT CONCEPT — RENDER
02 / METHOD
The research becomes a system.
ACG takes the lab’s computational model of affect and gives it a shell. Data enters the system, is interpreted through emotional and color logic, and is rendered through a chosen medium.
In this first public version, the rendering method is light. Future versions may use other sensory or spatial outputs. The constant is the system: affective input, computational interpretation, and public rendering.
ACG is the applied layer of the research. It tests whether affect can be made legible outside the page, outside the diagram, and inside shared space.
03 / FIELD ONE
The collective field.
One field is generated through American Emotions, the lab’s continuous instrument for tracking collective affect through public data. The system reads the national emotional atmosphere and translates it into a color field.
In the storefront version of ACG, that field becomes light. As the national field shifts across the day, the installation shifts with it. The data remains computational, but its output becomes environmental.
This is the first time American Emotions has been rendered as a physical public system.
04 / FIELD TWO
The local field.
A second field is generated by the people present in the room. Visitors are invited to respond to a simple affective prompt. Each response is interpreted through the same emotional and color logic used across SLBH’s affective systems.
Those responses contribute to a local field: a live reading of the room’s affective state. Over time, the installation accumulates the emotional presence of the people who enter it.
The room becomes both participant and instrument.
05 / READING
Two fields in the same space.
The storefront version of ACG places two affective fields in the same room: the collective field of American Emotions and the local field of visitor response.
They are almost never the same color. When they are, something has happened: a moment of alignment between the emotional atmosphere outside the room and the emotional presence inside it.
The installation is a reading instrument. It does not ask visitors only to look at light. It asks them to encounter affect as something with shape, scale, color, and duration.
ACTIVATION
06 / SYSTEM NOTES
A computational shell for affective rendering.
ACG operates as a translation system. It receives affective inputs, processes them through SLBH’s emotional and color logic, and renders them through a physical or sensory output.
The system is designed to be portable across contexts. A storefront, a retail activation, a public program, or a temporary installation can each become a site for testing how emotional data moves from abstraction into experience.
INPUT TYPES
- PUBLIC DATA
- VISITOR RESPONSE
- LOCATION-BASED SIGNAL
- TEMPORAL FIELD STATE
- SENSORY PAIRING
RENDERING OUTPUTS
- LIGHT
- COLOR
- SCENT
- PRINTED MATTER
- ID CARD
- MAP
- PUBLIC DISPLAY
