If one waving Maneki Neko or Japanese Lucky Cat brings you luck, then hundreds of them should be enough to win the Mega Millions, right?
For his art installation The Global Pursuit of Happiness, or The Army of Luck, Boris Petrovsky enlisted the aid of 520 Lucky Cats, synchronized to wave us a luck tsunami. Best of all, viewers can command the cats to wave at will:
The material element of the installation»The Global Pursuit of Happiness, or: The Army of Luck« is the »Lucky Cats' Matrix«. It contains 520 shiny golden XXL Lucky Cats made of plastics which are arranged in 40 rows and 13 columns on a ramp-like stand made of aluminum (W 8 m, H 3 m, D 2 m).
Visitors experience the Lucky Cats' Matrix as a dot-matrix display which consists of 520 waving paw grid points as its »pixels«. In each cat a servomotor is built in to control the paws move exactly in position and speed.
The visitors are requested imaginarily by the cats to interact as users: "Your concept of happiness is our lucky command. Write it on the keyboard".
Words and sentences up to 40 characters can be put in and are displayed clearly visible with the paws letter by letter as sliding text marquee. So to say, the users »choreograph« the Lucky Cats performance wordwise. Literally it is the »inscription« of an idea of happiness or a wish in the Lucky Cats' bodies by moving their paws forward and backward.
Words and sentences up to 40 characters can be put in and are displayed clearly visible with the paws letter by letter as sliding text marquee. So to say, the users »choreograph« the Lucky Cats performance wordwise. Literally it is the »inscription« of an idea of happiness or a wish in the Lucky Cats' bodies by moving their paws forward and backward.