Smile — you’re on the chaos cam.
The tension, nerves and bursts of celebration from Knicks fans gathered outside Madison Square Garden on Wednesday were all visible through a network of Midtown traffic cameras.
Artist Morry Kolman created GardenCam to capture the frenzy for people who can’t make it to the arena — or would rather avoid the crush of fans outside MSG during the NBA Finals.
“I saw that there was a lot of energy around them,” Kolman told The Post. “And as a native New Yorker, I wanted to kind of make something that other New Yorkers could enjoy and feel like they were taking part in this really special moment.”
“You can actually see and experience that fervor in real time,” he added.
Wednesday’s Game 4 crowd was the first to be featured on GardenCam, which combines six live traffic camera feeds positioned around the Garden, giving viewers a chance to watch fans as they watch the Knicks.
But there was little people-watching to do on Wednesday after MSG canceled its outside watch party around 5 p.m. — just hours ahead of tip-off.
Instead, the livestreams captured fans surging into and out of the World’s Most Famous Arena, and the videos even captured the NYPD establishing a perimeter around the area.
Uncontained rowdiness was pushed out of the camera’s view and onto nearby neighborhoods, including down to the West Village, where several blocks were completely taken over by cheering fans.
Kolman launched GardenCam last week as a means of paying homage to the Knicks during their historic run for the NBA title.
At the suggestion of a “handsome lawyer friend,” Kolman, a software engineer, repackaged his uber-popular TrafficCamPhotoBooth.com project, which gave New Yorkers access to more than 900 city traffic cameras in real time by linking users up to the Department of Transportation’s readily available streams on its own site.
He was also inspired to invigorate the Knicks-version by the eyes-on-the-ground views of the “orange and blue” flood around MSG that takes over social media on any game day.
“You see the people that are posting from right outside of the garden, you see people that have climbed up on the lamp post and are posting from a little bit above the crowd,” Kolman said. “And I was thinking, ‘I know another way that I can give even one more view of the crowd.’
“I think it’s just a really nice way to show the ecstasy of the city from just one more angle.”
The feeds are choppy and fuzzy, giving off a time-lapse effect of the crowds as they filter around the Garden.
But the cameras are faster than some TV providers, and can offer clues to viewers as to how the game is going based on the quick reactions of the crowd.
It also offers viewers a chance to witness the historic madness and crowds from the comfort of their own homes.
The crowds have been slightly hampered outside MSG for the past two games because the famous players were inside, but Kolman expects the security to loosen up when the action heads to Texas for Game 5 — leaving plenty of room for the Knicks maniacs to run rampant around the Mecca.
