Social Soul

Social Soul is an immersive digital experience inspired by the question: how does it feel to be inside someone else's social media stream? Created for Delta Air Lines at TED 2014, MKG collaborated with artists Lauren McCarthy and Kyle McDonald to design an experience that brings to life a user's Twitter stream in a larger-than-life structure where their social media profile is on display in a 360-degree stream of monitors, mirrors and sound. The experience starts with the stream of the person visiting, it next uses a custom algorithm to match participants with other TED attendees and speakers, displaying their social stream of SNS account on a monitor. After exiting, users and their connected ‘Soul Mate’ receive a tweet encouraging offline connections and conversation.

Lauren McCarthy is an LA-based artist whose work examines how issues of social system and technical system affect our social relationships. Lauren’s work has been exhibited internationally, at places such as Ars Electronica, Conflux Festival, SIGGRAPH, LACMA and the Japan Media Arts Festival.

She worked on installations for the London Eye, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is a Sundance Institute Fellow and was previously a resident at CMU STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Eyebeam, and Ars Electronica / QUT TRANSMIT. Lauren is an Assistant Professor at UCLA Design Media Arts.

Kyle McDonald is an artist who deals with computer code. He pursues creative exploration activities through interactive and immersive installation and performance and tool production. He offer unique experiences by adopting technical factors such as computer vision, machine running, networking, and computing.