Broadband provider Orcon wanted to leverage their sponsorship of the Semi-Permanent creative conference with something cool. We created the Orcon Spider Art installation, where twitter-controlled robots spray-painted giant stencilled canvases created by artists featuring at the conference.

Conference attendees were asked to tweet the coordinates of the square they’d like painted onto a canvas, and the colour. Then they watched as the Spiderbots sprayed paint as commanded.

After 1,000 tweets, the stencils were removed and the art from Barcelona graphic designer and illustrator Alex Trochut, Melbourne design studio SouthSouthWest and New York artist, designer and printmaker Kelli Anderson was revealed.

The quality of work on show at Semi-Permanent is world class. So for us to stand out with this savvy audience, we needed to have something really engaging and cool, yet simple to participate in. We correctly figured most attendees would have a smartphone and a Twitter account, so using this as the entry mechanism made it simple and easy for most to get involved. And by offering the opportunity to win a completed artworks from one of the artists attendees were paying to see, added to the likelihood of involvement.

Large crowds gathered at the installation each day of the conference. All 1,000 tweets needed to complete the artworks were received and thousands more tweets shared the story of Orcon and its Spider Art, further enhanced by news coverage online and on national news shows. Most importantly, Orcon was seen as a smart, savvy broadband provider in the New Zealand market.