Chameleon Wall


Breathing new life into a building with an interactive digital wall that responds to text messages in real-time.

Chameleon Wall is a nature-inspired interactive digital wall that translates text messages into unique, beautiful displays of colors and images. Regent Properties tasked us to design a series of unique digital artworks for 701 B Street that builds community, gives visitors a canvas to impact the space, and reflects on local San Diego culture. 

Just as chameleons change their skin color to mimic their environment or express their mood, Chameleon Wall expresses the moods of its visitors via SMS. 

When a visitor texts the Chameleon Wall, a cloud server analyzes the message, and the reflective crystals take on the colors and patterns of the image in breath-like strokes. If someone sends a picture, the Wall extracts the dominant colors and creates organic designs made of those colors. If they send text, a custom algorithm maps those words and phrases to their closest visual colors, turning them into animations. The wall displays a sequence of curated images when no one is interacting with it. 

The server utilizes natural language processing to decipher the mood of each visitor’s text, and the installation changes its display accordingly, resulting in a reflective and distinctive display of each visitor’s thoughts and feelings.

No two displays on Chameleon Wall are the same. Chameleon Wall draws upon a vast search algorithm to generate an infinite number of color palettes and images to display based on each text. Even the same text can get different displays, making each experience memorable. 

Regent Properties and SOSO are committed to adaptive reuse, and Chameleon Wall is the perfect answer to adaptively breathe new life into a familiar space. By creating a unique experience for each user, digital installations such as Chameleon Wall have an evergreen quality by consistently providing dynamic value to their spaces that static installations can’t. 

Chameleon Wall connects people, builds community, and reflects San Diego's pulse. It provides onlookers with a blank canvas and the ability to impact their environments, providing a sense of respite. Regent’s commitment to creating unique, fun, and dynamic environments was the perfect catalyst for these immersive experiences.

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Client

Regent Properties

Collaborators

Tecture

Digital Ambiance

Services

Creative Direction

Installations & Placemaking

Software Development

Interactive Lighting

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