Data Visualization

Hello everybody, welcome to my journey through data visualization! There’s a wide range of stuff here that I didn’t get to touch on in my presentation, so make sure not to miss anything. This is media delight!

The first attempts of data visualization I could find were pre-computer. Experiments with ASCII art, an early form of digital imaging using computer text and symbols, actually started on typewriters. http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2006/07/27/ascii-art-1939/

ASCII art relies primarily on computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1967. Since early computer printers didn’t have graphical capability, text had to stand in. For ASCII art, the formal qualities of data are of utmost focus. An image is made through the composition of shape, position, and weight of text, numbers, and punctuation.
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~mnaylor/ascii/
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/7373/new.htm#new

There are also several ASCII generators these days: http://www.glassgiant.com/ascii/

Ben Fry http://benfry.com/

From our gaming class we looked at machine code art and the exploration of “what’s under the interface.” Ben Fry’s first ventures into data visualization stemmed from documenting the computational data used to process videogames. He developed a Processing applet to map the executables from popular Atari games. They’re beautiful. http://benfry.com/distellamap/

Here’s a similar pursuit into video game speak: http://assembler.org/

Jonathan J. Harris http://www.number27.org/

1) A characteristic of data visualization on the internet is that is tends to often contain a geographical element. We see a collapsing of distance and depth, and are reminded of our proximity.

2D representation: http://www.number27.org/work/maps/index.html

With hypertext data visualization becomes interactive and user relevant.

http://www.number27.org/work/maps/traveltime/index.html

Postal Map:
http://acg.media.mit.edu/people/fry/zipdecode/

Cabspotting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B05e9B5QLzY

US Flight Patterns over Florida
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0iAgNfc3dg


2) Data visualization with the aide of hyperlinks has opened up new forms of visual representation of relationships. Some things aren’t so easy to consolidate, and often things grow.

Ben Fry - the Genome Project: http://acg.media.mit.edu/people/fry/index.html
The sites I focused on in my presentation are here. They are all very interesting projects by Jonathan J. Harris, and raise several comments on the blogosphere. He has created search engines that scour the web for sentences and images from blogs that depict feelings. His interest is to “see what love and hate looks or sound like”.
(sites are in chronological order)

Understanding Vorn:
http://www.understandingvorn.org/

Word Count:
http://www.wordcount.org/main.php

Love Lines:
http://www.love-lines.com/lovelines.html

We Feel Fine:
http://www.wefeelfine.org/

His newest project was just uploaded a couple days ago! It appears to be a mind-web of topics and images on the web using the metaphor of constellations.

Universe: Revealing Our Modern Mythology
http://universe.daylife.com/


3) Data Visualization often focuses on habits and environments, and thinks about digital space like a physical entity. What would it be like to live amongst the data?

The Internet Environment:
http://packetgarden.com/

BumpTop Desktop:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ


These next sites are looser form of data visualization. With the Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) phenomenon there are more and more people giving in to their virtual lives. Many people tend to prefer the freedom of their online lives. A company is trying to cash in on this interest by milling items from the game Second Life. Essentially, if in the game you have a spaceship, you can have it in real life too- or at least a statue.

Second Life Milling:
http://www.selectparks.net/modules.php?name=News&new_topic=37
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/software/3d-printing-for-second-life-residents-174778.php


4) Another element I found pertinent to data visualization was that it often requires participation and input for a generative visualization to be made.

Hypertable:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8yFAS2GQQ8

The new Nintendo Wii has a revolutionary remote that can sense hand movement. If has two accelerometers, a gyroscope, and 3d location imaging sensors, so it can tell the speed, pitch, and location of the remote. Several programmers are interested in modifying the use of the remote it to make highly interactive applications. Those of you interested in interactive media should pay attention to these: they are cheap and have a bunch of very useful technologies in them!

Wii Control:
http://www.usmechatronics.com/usmgarage/WiiBot.html


5) The last thing important to data visualization in that there needs to be some sort of hierarchy. If information is too evenly spread compositions tend to be static, so data visualization often has competitive elements.

This isn’t visualization per-se, but if to see is to feel, then this is an interesting form of data visualization.

PainStation!:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-tffzJNK84
http://www.painstation.de/

Hamster
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyG9mvkR0Ws&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Evideogamesblogger%2Ecom%2F2007%2F02%2F19%2Freal%2Dlife%2Dhamster%2Dvideo%2Dgame%2Ehtm

Lukas