Technology Garden

Technology Garden combines digital aesthetics with the traditional forms of an English garden.

We borrow the colors from both the IBM brand guidelines and the shades of UV light photography, a technique used by scientists to expose patterns visible only to insects - like bees - that see a wider spectrum of light than humans. This echoes IBM's role in “showing the invisible” through data visualisation.

The forms are driven by the concept of morphogenesis - a biological process that causes an organism to develop its shape. We perceive this as a metaphor of flexibility of IBM software offerings that can constantly change and adapt to rising challenges imposed by Wimbledon and our ever more data driven world.

Our first flower responds to AI Highlights: short video clips generated with the help of IBM Watson. We use data like crowd excitement and player gesture to change the flower's bloom and twist.

Our second IBM Technology Garden flower is driven by match data: sets are branch groups, games are the branches themselves and winning points are blooming flowers.

IBM provides cyber security services for Wimbledon throughout the year. The core of our third flower constitutes those services while the spores density increases the more attacks are targeted against the Championships' websites.

Every hour thousands of people visit Wimbledon.com and the IBM Slam Tracker. We represent individual user journeys as blades of grass getting more dense the more visitors we have.

The last flower responds to weather conditions: the better the weather, the more it blooms. The warmer the temperature, the more saturated are the colors.

While not in use the screen enters the Idle Mode. A storm of data particles continuously shifts and morph, creating and dissolving forms as a representation of IBM services adapting constantly to new challenges.

IBM Technology Garden was showcased as the key part of the IBM kiosk at 2019 Wimbledon Championships. Surrounded by real blooming flowers and supported by additional screens with data dashboards, it created a unique experience and deep dive into IBM's data.

To support the installation, we designed an interactive iPad app for the hosts allowing people to navigate the dataset timelines. The different screens were showing both raw numbers and how they influence a given flower.

IBM Technology Garden was exhibited at 2019 London Tech Week TechXLR8 and 2019 Wimbledon Championships.

Are you interested in representing your data in a new way? Learn more about Generative and Data Driven Art, Data Visualisation R&D, or contact us and say hello.