Happy faces take to the Dublin skies

The organisers of an Arts festival designed to get the public talking about mental health have released hundreds of smiley faced discs into the Dublin sky.

"The Happy Cloud" features helium-filled discs covered in smiley faces.

First Fortnight invited UK artist Stuart Semple to contribute his "The Happy Cloud" work to the event, in a collaboration sponsored by Amnesty International.

Happy clouds in #Dublin pic.twitter.com/CYBkbbFuCq

— Alessandra Bettelli (@SandraBi) January 2, 2014

"It's a modified snow machine, basically," said First Fortnight organiser David Keegan, as the first discs were released near Dublin's Grafton Street.

"You release them and they're floating off … it's provocative, it's there, it'll land on someone's windscreen or someone's front garden, and they'll wonder why it's there."