This Lamp Unleashes a Storm Every Time Trump Unleashes a Tweet
Twitter can occasionally drive us all crazy. Some more than others: In 2014, scientists examined the case of a 31-year-old German woman who started exhibiting psychotic symptoms after becoming obsessed with the social media service. According to the study, the woman spent “several hours a day reading and writing messages, neglecting her social relationships and, sometimes, even regular sleeping hours” until her addiction got so bad that she landed in the psych ward.
Maybe Twitter hasn’t sent you to the hospital—yet—but I bet you feel a certain kind of storm cloud stirring around in your head every time an obnoxious person in your timeline starts wreaking havoc in 140 characters. For me, and for many Americans, that’s our president. And since Twitter won’t be banning Donald Trump anytime soon, the storms keep on coming.
No doubt the French designer behind Parse/Error recognizes this, which is why he fashioned a glass dome lamp that literally unleashes a thunderstorm every time Trump tweets. See the lamp in action here.
The artist configured the lamp to monitor Trump’s Twitter account and materialize each new message by a “series of flashes, rolling in the cloud and coming to disturb the soft light of the lamp,“ according to the description. The lamp is meant to “hide its true nature behind a beautiful object, which immediately modifies the observer’s gaze when it purpose is revealed, causing anguish and fascination.”
Parse/Error said the project is perfect for a world in which “the words of one man, released without reflection and spontaneously on a global social network, can endanger the fate of millions by sending the specter of nuclear war on the planet,” according to his project’s description.
Sounds about right.
