Information aesthetics
I really like the idea behind this site that tracks data visualisation and information aesthetics. We see data visualisation every day and I guess pretty much never give it a second glance. However, the Information Aesthetics site shows some wonderful and innovative examples of data visualisation that will grab your attention. After a few minutes browsing this site, you’ll be looking high and low for that Power Point installation disc, then you’ll find another use for it - coaster, Frisbee…
This is one of my favourites. Imagine seeing the same data on a graph, or as a number or index - wouldn’t have the same impact, would it:
The following image is from Boris Müller for an annual international literature festival. The image is a visualisation of poetry. The alphabetical values of each word are summed, and the resulting number is mapped onto a circle (the diameter of which is determined by the length of the poem) as a red dot. The lines you see connect the words in the poem in sequence. I may try something like it for this blog - with posts and comments plotted in a similar manner - I wonder what that will look like…
3 Comments, Comment or Trackback
wordswordswords
like the exhaust balloons. great idea, thanks.
Apr 27th, 2007
andy
interesting post. Are you going to try plotting the posts in a similar diagram? Would be an interesting coding challenge. Wonder how u’d do tht in php? cheers.
Apr 27th, 2007
johno
I think it could be done using the PHP GD library; if I have some time (unlikely), then I’ll try it; extracting the data is easy enough - simply extract from mysql, do all the calculations (simple arithmetic) and then plot it with GD; would be an interesting project…anyone care to lend a helping hand?
Muller uses “Processing, an open source programming language and environment”. I’ll download a copy and see what I can produce with it.
May 3rd, 2007
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