Raspberry Pi integrated into the world of art. I hadn’t come across much of this before, and I like it a lot. As a self-proclaimed ‘artist of stuff’, it’s always exciting to see something arty that calls to the maker inside. With Glaciers, NYC-based Zach Gage has achieved exactly that.

Glaciers was an art instillation that, like the landforms from which it takes its name, slowly developed over time. I say ‘was’, but with each of its constituent pieces still running and a majority already sold, Glaciers continues indefinitely. Using forty Raspberry Pis attached to forty plainly presented Adafruit e-ink screens, Gage used Google Search’s auto-complete function to create poetry.

We’ve all noticed occasional funny or poignant results of the way Google tries to complete your search query for you based on the vast amount of data that passes through its search engine daily. Gage has programmed the Raspberry Pis to select the top three suggestions that follow various chosen phrases and display them on the screens. The results are striking, often moving, and usually something that most people would acknowledge as poetry, or at least poetic.

The screens refresh daily as the Pis check Google for changes and update accordingly. For some search phrases, the autocompletions can change daily; for others, it could take years. A poem you’ve had upon your wall for months on end could suddenly change unexpectedly, updating to reflect the evolving trends of user queries on the internet.

“The best paintings you can look at a thousand times and you keep seeing new things.” – Zach Gage

Glaciers is certainly an intriguing installation, with pithy observations of the vulnerability of anonymous internet users in pieces such as:

and the (somewhat) more light-hearted:

Zach Gage is an indie video game creator, responsible for titles such as SpellTower and the somewhat fear-inducing Lose/Lose (Space Invaders meets permanent file deletion with some 17000 files already lost to the game since launch). He’s previously used Raspberry Pis in other projects, such as his Twitter-fuelled best day ever and Fortune. I bet this isn’t the last time he does something fabulous with a Pi.