information aesthetics

a sophisticated visual aggregator that tracks the activities of about 32,000 noteworthy people, both living & dead. the dataset consists of a "Who's Who" including the curriculum vitae of each noted person (i.e. information such as date of birth, a biography, & other essential facts.)

the resulting network graphs document the connections between people, many of which are not always obvious, as a person's otherwise inexplicable behavior is often understood by examining the crowd that person has been associating with.

nodes can be order hierarchically, as a grid, or symmetrically, or be highlighted by age, political affiliation or sexual orientation. all graphs can be stored for others to explore, ranging from Google's board politics over Larry Page to the Enron board political contributions.

[link: nndb.com]

aesthetic & collection & infovis . comments? »

an online & interactive timeline that arranges the unsorted collection of YouTube videos by date, offering a visual & useful perspective on recent events. individual videos are placed on a horizontal timeline, with more popular videos appearing larger.

[link: dipity.com|via techcrunch.com]

aesthetic & collection & infographic . comments? »

an eco-visualization concept that aims to increase the awareness of energy usage. everyday objects are used to generate energy by piezoelectronic components that generate a small amount of electricity when moved (pressed down). the applications range from a simple keyboard button press (19mW) over opening a door (0.2W/s) to sitting on a chair (412W/s)

[link: yankodesign.com|via psfk.com]

see also:
. visualizing CO2 emissions
. enerjar
. energy saverclip
. vision energy sculpture
. energy joule
. energy tree
. carbon eco-viz
. power-aware cord
. wattson display
. power point graph

aesthetic & ambient & physical . comments? »

the largest color LED display worldwide, & the first photo-voltaic system integrated into a glass curtain wall in China. the display requires zero external energy, as the facade harvests solar energy by day & uses it to illuminate the screen after dark. the display comprises of 2,292 color (RGB) LED’s light points comparable to a 24,000 sq. ft. (2.200 m2) monitor screen for dynamic content display.

the polycrystalline photovoltaic cells are laminated within the glass of the curtain wall & placed with changing density on the entire building’s skin. the density pattern increases building’s performance, allowing natural light when required by interior program, while reducing heat gain & transforming excessive solar radiation into energy for the media wall.

you can play with the online simulator, or watch a movie after the break.

[link: greenpix.org|via engadget.com]

aesthetic & architecture & interface . 4 comments »

a set of relational visualizations represent the relative frequencies of trigrams as they appear on the web, based on a massive (100GB) n-gram dataset from Google's corpus archive. n-grams are pieces of sentences. a trigram (n=3), for example, might be "I like food" or "frog is tasty."

the first visualization compares the 120 trigrams of the terms 'He' with 'She', while the other is based on 75 trigrams of 'I' & 'You'. the frequencies of the 2nd word in the trigrams were sorted in decreasing order. words are sized according to the square root of their use frequencies. the color-coded lines act like paths (similar to a tree structure), enumerating all of the occurring trigrams.

[link: chrisharrison.net

aesthetic & collection & infographic . comments? »

please pay careful attention to this (ironic) infographic style video before entering a Diesel store.

[link: youtube.com]

aesthetic & infographic . 2 comments »

another example of a spelling frequency graph, here showing the relative distribution of the different spellings for the terms "ohshit" (vs. "oh shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit") & "damn" (vs. "daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn") based on the data reported back via the search results from Google.

[link: ohshiit.com & daaamn.com|thnkx Mart!n]

see also:
. aargh spelling frequency,
. aah spelling frequency.

aesthetic & collection & infographic . 5 comments »

a sophisticated online collection of about 48 design patterns that describe distinct methods for the display of interactive information graphics, their active behavior as well as the forms of user interaction with them.

as part of the written thesis in Interface Design from Christian Behrens, a freelance interface designer in Berlin, the website aims to inform graphic designers who need to deal with complex tasks in the field of information design, but do not have any specific knowledge in statistics or data visualization. it is intended as an online "cookbook" that offers a set of tools & methods to cope with all common forms of data visualization, similar to design patterns in computer science, such as the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library.

each pattern consists of a text part that describes the general characteristics of the pattern, its required or appropriate data source, its generic application, & a discussion of the pattern's usage rationale. besides a real-world example, each pattern is accompanied by a layout that is based on an identical dataset, here the statistical yearbook of the City of Berlin.

Chris informed me there is the possibility to publish the thesis as a book. any interest from infosthetics readers?

[link: niceone.org|thnkx angus & Christian]

aesthetic & infographic & infovis . 13 comments »

an alternative 3D view to read, play & interact with news from msnbc.com online. users are able to customize news channels, sort them by theme or time, browse & save specific news stories, or just gaze the news go by in auto-mode. reminds me of brynsbrain & flickr tiltviewer.

also see the recent post about inviting you to vote for the creative visualization of news by msnbc at the webbys awards.

[links: spectramsnbc.com (Spectra application) & spectra.msnbc.com (Spectra overview) & NewsWare.msnbc.com (central repository)|thnkx Sam]

aesthetic & interface & news . 2 comments »

an interactive infographic treemap representing how much the average American citizen spends on 84,000 products in about 200 categories, including fast food, car insurance, rent, electricity, garbage collection & so on. larger shapes make up a larger part of spending. individual shapes can be selected & the treemap can be zoomed in & out.

the combination of the organic looking treemap shapes & the encompassing circular form reminds me of the voronoi treemap & circular treemap algorithms respectively.

[link: nytimes.com]

aesthetic & infographic & news . 4 comments »

a set of "semi-abstract" circular visualizations of the WiFi encryption levels while traveling through the cities of London, Vescemont, Belfort & Barcelona. each circular item represent the recording of wireless network through a journey. each succesfull recording influences the time line thickness & adds a “pin”. red pins represent non-encrypted networks other networks are the smaller black ones. the thickness of the main line & the length of the "node pins" depends on the ecryption from thinner to thicker: "WEP" , "WPA", "TKIP" & "NONE".

[link: yesyesnono.co.uk & flickr.com]

aesthetic & infographic & locative . 1 comment »

from Eric Rodenbeck from stamen.com at Postopolis, the mapping & data visualization firm known from digg labs & Trulia Hindsight.

several data visualization talks have been put online recently. if you are interested in this subject, be sure to check out following online recordings:

. Fernanda Viegas & Martin Wattenberg (IBM) @ Parc Forum 2006 (not blogged before)
. Ben Fry @ See conference 2008.
. Frank van Ham (IBM) @ See conference 2008.
. Bernard Kerr (Yahoo! interaction designer) @ Innovationsforum Interaktionsdesign.
. Eric Rodenbeck (stamen.com) @ Nextcity.
. Jonathan Harris documentary.
. Hans Ronsling @ TED 2006.
. Jonathan Harris @ TED 2007.
. Marcos Weskamp @ See conference 2007.
. Sep Kamvar @ See conference 2007.

this should keep you busy for at least a couple of hours.

[link: vimeo.com|via w.we-make-money-not-art.com]

aesthetic & infographic & infovis . 4 comments »

a 3D data sculpture of the Sunday Minneapolis / St. Paul public transit system, where the horizontal axes represent directional movement and the vertical represents time.

the piece titled "bus structure 2am-2pm" is constructed of 47 horizontal layers, each forming a map of the bus routes that run during a given interval of time. looking down from the top, one sees the Sunday bus map of the Twin Cities, while looking from the side, the times appears as strata building upwards. within each layer, every transit route that operates at that time is represented by wood balls placed at its scheduled stops, connected by the horizontal copper rods. each route moves through time and space differently, carving out its own trail that may or may not meet conveniently with other routes.

in total 42 routes, 47 intervals of time & 296 bus stops are depicted by about a half-mile of copper rod & 6,000 wood balls, suspended in the air by hundreds of blue threads.

[link: rjustin.com (Bus Structure 2am-2pm) & rjustin.com (Mapping Mixed Information)|via visualcomplexity.com

aesthetic & infographic & physical . comments? »