Infosthetics
Due to a host of internet connectivity problems and various machinations against me, I’ve had an issue of uploading things to my blog of late. Hopefully this is now all fixed and sorted, and I can get back to making my blog look like more of a youtube video listing than anything else (I can’t help it if there are so many cool things I want to reference and show here, really now).
Okay, so back to module 209. Much like stage one module 106 of last year, this module has also moved into the spread of hertzian space and digital signals. Additionally to dealing with this information is also the addition of a more developed visualisation of the data recorded – such as wifi signals or bluetooth.
Data visualisation can yield some amazing results, enough to make the casual viewer awed and confused as to how the data morphed into an image of wonderous abstraction, and simultaneously persist in showing the actual data. As part of this, I spent a while looking up references for data visualisation from many sites.
To start with, we were shown this video as an example:
Which is a pretty cool way of visualising wifi data, firework colours and all.
Looking at a couple other blogs which talk about data visualisation, I came across the CompSci.ca Blog, which makes a short post about data as an art piece. It also highlights a use for Data visualisation beyond just a visual, the visualisation itself can help to identify popular trends mush easier, as well as being an expressive piece. The blog links to a digital version of a Japanese based magazine called PingMag, which has an article on an infosthetics interview with Andrew Moore, the owner of the blog infosthetics.com.
Infosthetics.com is a blog that has a huge volume of data, with posts concerning the subject ranging all the way back to 2004.
‘info-aesthetics: information & form’ is a semi open-source book by Lev Manovich. i assume the term ‘information aesthetics’ is thus coined by him, although the connotation between the two concepts (~information) has been known and studied for longer. the book started in 2000, and you can read its current state online. manovich.net
Another blog that may make a useful reference is Vital Signs, which links to an article, and notes some tools that can be used for web data tracking, as well as some data visualisations. Though a short post, it is very informative.
Smash Magazine has a list of data visualisation examples and tools used to create them, which was linked through Journalistopia, which talks about using XML and Flash as a data visualisation tool.
InformationArchitects.jp have taken a different spin on the topic; one of the things they have done is create a web-trend visualisation using the Tokyo Metro Map. This form of trend mapping appears to be very accurate, and also relates to the real space of Tokyo in terms of generalisations, and complete coincidence. One of my favourite lines from this blog is along the more revealing coicidences list, at number 6: “Skype has conquered a place that doesn’t exist.”
Mashable.com has an extensive list of different types of visualisation tools, such as twitter posts visualisation and mapping, flickr image tag visualisations and more. A couple ideas that I like are those of walktoweb.com - enter an URL and then visually browse the sites that are linked to that URL in something that looks like a big mind map, and crazyegg.com, which is a tool that shows a heat map of user clicks, effectively allowing for a quick anaylsis of user behaviour on a website.
FlowingData.com is a good reference for ideas and creation in terms of infosthetics/data visualisation. The aim of the site is to explore how data can be interpreted and used, mainly through the use of visualisation techniques.
One of the cool things on this site is a visualisation of keyboard use, to show typing efficiency.
Lastly, I want to reference my first post for this module, and necro up a link that I posted several months ago. It relates to this youtube video, which is one of the first types of data visualisations I seem to find whenever I go searching for things to reference and research.
The data mapping and visualisation of air traffic seems to be a popular subject for data visualisation, not only for its practical uses but also for its scale and capacity for movement tracking on a 24/7 hour basis. As previously stated, I put a link in my first post for this module, linking to some of Aaron Koblin’s work, in this case air traffic patterns and visualisation. This part of his site shows the sheer size and extent of movement or air traffic at different times of the day, as well as being able to identify different types of plane model, manufacturer and altitude during flight. There are several varying visualisations of the same data, and on the whole the culminative effect shows the practicality of data visualisation alongside being a piece of creative effort. What can be learnt, and indeed shown from models like these is not only trends but the way in which space is utilised, allowing through anaylsis of such information a better manufacture of design for the future, and a much more effective form of design process.
Additional Links:
Hertzian Space -
http://varnelis.net/articles/architecture_for_hertzian_space - historical context
http://www.slideshare.net/dw.scott/hertzian-space-frequency-hijack - information slideshow
http://future.iftf.org/2006/05/hertzian_space_.html
