Portray is an interactive art gallery unit displaying the mood of the general public towards each art piece and sections of the gallery.

Background: Portray was a 3rd year project for Cape Peninsula University of Technology based on Arduino prototyping. Before starting with Portray, we had to make and develop an existing product made with an arduino. As a group we chose to make Moodly, an interactive hanging mood light.

Moodly would pick up when a person would walk into the room and respond with some shining lights. Moodly then picks up your mood by how hard you shake it. Shaking it very hard would trigger Moodly to also becoming agree (assuming you'r angry) shining bright red lights. It would then calm down by slowing the pace of the red light flashes and move to a blue ending in a green light. Moodly would however take long to calm down if you shook it hard and just left it. If you shook Moodly and it started flashing red you can calm it down by slowly wooing it. If perhaps you were not angry and only wooed Moodly from the start, it would climb from a green to a blue light and instead of flashing lights it would brighten and soften in a breathing motion. It you where to clap twice, Moodly would shut down completely until it picks up when the user moves it, meaning it will not pick up when a person moves or claps, only when touching it and moving it would it go back on.

The assignment was then to develop a product using the same principles, leading to Portray. Portray does not only help people physically see and understand what others feel towards an art piece but also gives significant information to the gallery owner in regards to areas and walls that sell the most. The Portray system also keeps tracks of each art pieces details and works out according to artist and art genre what its selling potential is. The Portray unit exists of the following components: