sijings-lookingoutwards-12Project Priors and Precursors

The two project I chose for this week is both down by Fernanda Viégas, namely the “Wind Map” and “The Shape of Song (2001)”. I was interested to do things related to data visualization. However, I want to create the visual part with more interesting and attractive elements and Viégas’ projects is a much more complicated version of what I intended to accomplish. Although both projects are about data visualization, one source came from the environmental concern of how wind travels, and the other one is about visualizing a song. The first one is about visualizing an invisible, ancient source of energy surrounds us—energy that powered the first explorations of the world, and that may be a key to the future.

 

For the second project, the wind map shows the delicate tracery of wind flowing over the US. The Shape of Song began as a quest to “see” musical form. He created a visualization method called an arc diagram that highlighted repeated sections of music–or of any sequence–with translucent arcs. The overall distribution of pattern gives me inspiration for making my possible work looks like. Similar to “Wind Map”, I also want to get inspirations from natural data which describes some changes.

Overall, I liked both projects. The only suggestion I have for the second project is to have the sound placed eithere side by side to the project or played as a background music. It is really cool to see the visual element, but I will even appreciate more if I am able to hear some corresponding music.

Here are the links to the projects: