City of Culture's tidal art project flooded with 'blue' messages as locals send rude phrases
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A tidal art project which flashes up giant words in the City of Culture has been flooded with off-colour messages.
Hull’s tidal barrier is supposed to project the spoken word in to huge scrolling text.
But instead, words like “big hairy man hammock”, “send nudes’ and “I am high” have been flashing up.
Locals fear the naughty words could even cause an accident as passing motorists clock the shocking text.
The interactive artwork ‘City Speaks’, is a major art project for the City of Culture,
A steel lectern on the quayside of Humber Dock provides a microphone and the words are sent to a data processing unit which transcribes them into scrolling text.
The public’s words are then projected onto the barrier within seconds.
But Vicky Owens, 34, from Hull, caught the artwork going wrong at midnight on Thursday while she was out with friends.
“It said ejaculation, then all sorts of stuff kept coming up,” she said.
“It came up with “big hairy man hammock” or something like that and “I am high”, “I am drunk”, “send nudes” and all sorts of stuff.
“It was a bit bizarre.”
(Image: hull daily mail)
The mum-of-three said although she saw the funny side, it could have been a bit different had she been with her kids.
“I didn’t realise until after there is a microphone people speak into so it was a bit surprising,” she said.
“You have to admit it’s funny. But you think if it’s the time of the day I have my kids with me, then it becomes a bit of a different issue.
“You think what about people driving this way, it is going to distract them.”
At the time of its launch back in February, ‘Look Up’ curator Andrew Knight explained more about the technology used and said some words are filtered.
“There is voice recognition software which translates the spoken word into text,” he said.
(Image: WENN)
“As time goes on the software will learn and get better. There is a long list of offensive words the software recognises and if spoken it will just come up blank.
“If people do say anything offensive, it will only scroll through once and won’t be seen again so it isn’t like graffiti which can remain for a while.
“But we trust the people of Hull to use this as intended.”
Ben McKnight, director of communications for Hull 2017, said: “The City Speaks is one of a series of public artworks being installed around Hull during its City of Culture year.
“There is a filter in place to block offensive words.”