The artistic community has been developing interactive works for public or semipublic settings for a number of years. These works utilise the public setting to tailor interaction and add an aesthetic dimension. In a similar approach, we are designing and implementing a system called The Common Touch (http://www.hiit.fi/~coutrix/art/TheCommonTouch/thecommontouch.html), which draws on the similarities between political revolt and advertisement in their use of the affective engagement of crowds. Crowd interaction is consequently an essential dimension of users’ experience with The Common Touch. In order to leverage this aspect in our design, we consider a large group of people as a single, elementary “user”. The novel contribution of The Common Touch is to consider the affective expressions of the crowd as a whole. The scientific aim of the installation is to raise appropriate questions about affective group experiences and propose a prototype pervasive affective system for crowds.