Twitter Aurora · Electronic Bohemia

At Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, Aurora turned a wall into a living landscape of conversation. Communities became continents; a single voice could open into a constellation of connections. Visitors could travel through it with a wand. By 2019 it held two hundred thousand voices and glowed in most of Twitter’s offices, from Tokyo to São Paulo. For years, somewhere in the world, it was always live.

A long office room with an exposed ceiling; at the far end a video wall shows a blue world map, and a person stands before it. — Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters: the wall as a world map.

A group of people, seen from behind, stand before a video wall filled with bright pink and white circles. — Guests at the San Francisco wall.

View down into a busy cafeteria; above the serving counters a large screen shows coloured clusters labelled Lifestyle, Entertainment, Music, News & Politics and Sports. — Lunchtime at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, with Aurora above the line.

An empty room with a concrete floor and a blue world-map video wall listing trends; a smaller screen on the side wall shows a man being interviewed. — The wand wall at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, August 2017.

Two men at an event beside a tall screen reading ‘What’s happening?’ above glowing clusters; one points at it. — What’s happening? Guests at a Twitter office screen.

I was at its heart from its first working prototype, building the foundation with Ryan Bartley, then leading its creative technology through its life at Twitter. Ian Ardouin-Fumat’s data science renewed its continents as Twitter changed; I built the real-time engine that let people move among them, turning the signals from Oblong’s wand into a calm, cinematic flight.

The world map folding into continents of interest. Each point is one of Twitter’s 200,000 most influential accounts; accounts that share many followers gather into a community, and communities into continents of passions such as music, sports and news.

Close-up of a hand holding a slim silver wand, silhouetted against a soft blur of pink and red lights. — Oblong’s wand, turned into a calm, cinematic flight.

A man stands alone before a large video wall, pointing a wand at glowing pink and blue clusters; trending hashtags run down the wall’s left side. — JD Corr flying the interest map by hand.

Visitors and the wand at the San Francisco wall.

Working closely with creative director Arianna Orland, I shaped how that world moved and responded. The tuning tools I built let Arianna and me refine it together, seeing and feeling each change as we made it. JD Corr, the team’s tech lead and its bridge to the rest of Twitter, ran the backend that fed every screen and kept the whole system on its feet.

In a dim lab, a small crowd watches a projection of red, blue and green clusters beside a list of trends; a presenter on the right is lit by the projected colours. — Arianna Orland presenting Aurora in Twitter’s New York lab, November 2019.

Chris Anderson, in glasses, types on a small handheld keyboard beside a video wall showing a blue world map, with a tall settings panel of numbers and red section bars floating over it. — Chris Anderson with the tuning panels open over the live wall in San Francisco, adjusting the wand’s flight settings from a keyboard in hand.

Seen from behind, Chris Anderson faces a video wall of glowing red and blue clusters; two settings panels float over it, with a round arrow cursor between them. — Chris at the interest map, two panels open and the wand’s cursor between them.

In a dim lab, a man in glasses holds a white wand and types at a standing desk of monitors showing coloured clusters; a woman stands behind him and a man works on a laptop in an armchair. — A working session in the New York lab, August 2019: me at the wand and keyboard, Manjula Nadkarni behind, Ian Ardouin-Fumat on his laptop.

In a dark lab, a woman in a green sweater works at a desk of monitors while a man stands at the right edge; a glowing doorway of light is projected on the wall behind them. — Arianna Orland and I at the lab desk, the Arch’s doorway projected on the wall behind, August 2019.

One engine drove every experience, reshaped for each space. On top-of-the-line render machines, it filled twelve San Francisco screens as one picture and lit the New York lab; it stood tall for guests at CES. In the smaller formats across Twitter’s offices, it ran on the modest computers tucked behind the displays. When the wall and office versions drifted apart, I brought them back into one, so new features could reach the offices too. The engine could also render its own films.

A blue freestanding cabinet in a lobby holds a tall screen showing a glowing ring of light; a woman walks past on the left. — CES 2019: the communities ring, live on a tall display.

One engine, recomposed for a tall display.

A dim lounge at night: a video wall of red, blue and teal clusters above two lounge chairs and a small round table. — San Francisco, July 2019: a late night with the second wall.

The engine also filmed itself: someone at Twitter asked for a moment, and it flew there, rendered the journey and sent the film back. JD Corr’s request system brought each ask to the engine.

The screens

Aurora on the walls and stages where it ran, then as the engine itself drew it.

Installations and events

From the engine

Within Aurora’s world, I designed and built the connections component, turning conversations into dynamic links between people. The engine had only ever known the present, so I proposed giving it a memory and built one: any recorded stretch of up to a week could unfold again, slowed to a drift or left to race. I added a virtual camera that could be cued and scripted toward the moments where the conversation gathered, so a replay could become a journey. The MTV Video Music Awards, replayed inside Aurora, became one of those journeys.

Connections coming alive in a lab test, May 2018.

The connections at work in the running engine, New York lab, August 2019.

A tall screen in a dark room, seen at an angle, shows a curved ring of points with columns of light and coloured arcs rising from it. — On the New York lab’s tall screen: a live ring laced with connections.

The MTV Video Music Awards, replayed inside Aurora.

Those modest office computers could only carry a lighter Aurora, so I devised a way to stream the full experience live from the New York lab. A few render machines there each produced its own stream, and screens worldwide picked up the one that fit their region and format, landscape or portrait. An office screen could now show what only the flagship machines could render. Mike Edwards and I designed the architecture together; Mike built the platform.

A dark map of glowing clusters labelled Tech, Lifestyle, News & Politics, Entertainment, Music and Sports. — What every HD screen received: the interest map, live.

A wall-mounted screen shows a blue world map lit with points of conversation beneath the words ‘What’s happening?’ — An HD screen in Twitter’s New York office.

That shared foundation also gave me room to keep experimenting. Communities spun into rings like Saturn’s, rose into columns, curled into a sphere, arched into domes and wrapped around an architectural threshold in a prototype. Time bent too: a whole night flared up at once, and a week of pop culture fountained into arcs. Each of these experiments grew from Ian’s communities.

A dark render: a bright burst at the centre of a faint ring flings amber and green arcs outward in every direction. — One community bursting open, its conversations flung in every direction.

Spectacle with analytical depth: a community bursting open, its topics and voices alongside.

Communities in orbit, each with its own ring.

A blue lobby cabinet with a tall screen in which columns of light rise from a glowing ring. — CES 2019: columns rising from the ring.

Communities stacked into a forest of glowing coils.

In a dark lab, a ring of coloured points is projected onto the wall around a monitor showing a smaller ring of the same kind. — In the lab: a ring of communities thrown onto the wall.

Every community spun into a ring.

Prototype

Architectural rendering of a bright reception area with a column, plants and a desk, framed by a doorway whose surfaces are covered in glowing points. — Prototype: the doorway as it would have stood in San Francisco’s reception.

Prototype: live Aurora imagery composited into a model of the proposed reception.

Signatures of a visit

I also prototyped a souvenir for every visitor: the wand’s whole flight through Aurora, kept and replayed as light. The project ended before anyone could take one home.

Seen from behind, a woman in a grey knitted cardigan points a white wand at a video wall; on its upper panels a fan of glowing cyan lines sweeps out across a blue screen, above a pale blue floor plane. — Arianna Orland flying the wand, her visit traced live on the wall, January 2018.

Her traces rising from the modelled floor as she flies.

On black, a long woven form of fine white and pale blue lines stretches across the frame beside a tilted panel of red, blue, orange, green and violet clusters. — A whole visit, replayed as light, beside the world it travelled through.

Fine white and pale blue lines on black, gathered into folds, fans and arches like a single drifting web. — A whole visit, replayed as light: one visitor’s signature.

From the laboratory

Moments held still from the experiments, each one grown from the same communities.