Any big city is a complex system consisting of countless individual elements made of cars, pedestrians, buildings, etc.

In LiveCityby Daniel Shiffman, live images from New York traffic cameras are filtered through a digital ecology to create an ever-changing grid of pixels. Each pixel interacts with their neighbouring pixels, just as the elements of the city do with their real-life physical neighbours.

At first, you see is a street and a skyline with moving cars – a landscape changing slowly through day and night. By clicking on the screen you can choose to collide with this reality, infusing the image with live colour from a different part of New York City: the neon lights of Times Square.

One can wait a long time before clicking; one can click only once; one can click all over the screen many times – each resulting in a different effect. Only one thing is sure: by interacting with the system, the system changes.

Via Neural.