Wi-Fi flowers sprouting across U.S.

September 16th, 2009 |

Author: admin

SAN FRANCISCO–A pair of Los Angeles artists have teamed up with Toyota on an usually functional art project: a set of large, colorful flowers that have been providing free Wi-Fi and power outlets in public places around the country.

Currently on display in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Gardens, the flowers–the creation of a company called Poetic Kinetics and its principals, Patrick Shearn and Cynthia Washburn–are part of a campaign for Toyota’s newest generation Prius.

Brightly colored by day and lit up with LEDs at night, the flowers have been on tour around the country for several weeks. According to John Lisko, the executive communications director for Saatchi & Saatchi, Toyota’s ad agency on the project, the flowers have gone through Boston, New York, Chicago, Seattle and will shortly be departing for Los Angeles.

The Wi-Fi flowers are lit up at night, and provide free Internet connectivity as well as power outlets to plug cell phones or laptops in to.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Inspired, at least in part, by a set of giant, mobile flowers Shearn built for Burning Man in 2005 and 2006, Toyota commissioned the project to reflect the theme of the new Prius: Harmony between man, nature and machine.

Run on solar power, the flowers pull in an Internet signal via a 3G network, explained Washburn, and then convert it to Wi-Fi which covers a radius of about 200 feet around each flower.

For now, the project is no more than temporary art. But Lisko said that Toyota is “thinking through” the possibility of providing permanent versions, particularly because, he said, the public feedback has been so strongly positive.