Pioneering technology is being used to monitor the mood of the entire city.

As part of the Brighton Digital Festival 2014, digital marketing agency iCrossing will build a picture of the emotional state of mind of Brighton and Hove.

The agency is using ground-breaking technology Emotable for the ambitious ‘mind of the city’ project which launched at the weekend.

Created by Brighton-based data science company Datanauts, Emotable™ monitors emotional language used in social media.

Sam Zindel, data strategist at iCrossing, said: “When it comes to social media, people are happy to talk very openly about their experiences.

“So what better way to understand how people are genuinely feeling about a city at any given moment than to monitor live tweets?

“With this project we hope to shine a unique light on the real mood of Brighton for the first time ever, be it happy, sad, scared, angry or surprised.

Throughout September some 350,000 tweets about Brighton will be analysed – about 500 every hour of every day.

The results will be online at http://ImBrighton.co.uk and projected onto a giant wall in the city centre.

Emotable looks for emotional language used in social media posts, tags it and then categorises it into one of five emotions – joy/happiness/love, sadness, fear/worry, anger/hatred or excitement/surprise.

Mr Zindel said: “People wear their heart on their sleeve on social media.

“We are all more than happy to give an honest opinion of the stuff we buy, see and do.

“This kind of data is invaluable for brands. But accurately analysing these emotional reactions has always been notoriously difficult.

“Emotable™ is one large step closer to being able to do this with credibility.”

The project will unfold in real-time with people able to determine the mood of the city through the lens of social media and watch it change over time.

The ‘EmoFlower’, will visualise tweets with coloured ‘petals’ growing and shrinking according to the volume of each emotion expressed.

‘Mind of the City’ project is part of a wider initiative called ‘Imagine Brighton’ aiming to unlock the value held in open data.

By capturing and analysing data from sources including transport, health, crime, education, the environment and local economy, Imagine Brighton aims to help Brighton and Hove with smarter decision-making, accelerating innovation and generating economic growth in the city.