Category: LookingOutwards-07

A project that I found interesting is the Wind Map by artist Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda Viegas. Martin Wattenberg leads the AI research initiative at Google, and focuses on combining those aspects with art. These wind maps range from calm days to huge hurricanes. In terms of time, all the maps focus on wind patterns since 2012. One of the main points that we can get out of this is that whether there is a hurricane or slight winds, wind patterns can still look dramatic at a 2D level. The algorithm to create this artwork is purely done in JavaScript and html, and the comet like tails describe the specific wind pattern.

I thought this was an interesting project because earlier this semester, we had to do a similar project for our architecture studio. Using wind patterns and other climate data can help us design better buildings. You can view the full project here.

For this analysis on data visualization artists, I wanted to look into the work of American scientist, Martin Wattenberg. With experience in working at IBM and co-leading Google PAIR, Wattenberg carries an interest in the different connections technology can make and the narrative and beauty that emerges from those connections. One such project that takes computation and captures the narrative/ storytelling of it that I find particularly interesting is Wattenberg’s Shape of Song exhibition.

(The above image shows a matrix of Wattenberg’s entire Shape of Song collection. The program to create these intricate forms was written in Java)

The purpose of the Shape of Song exhibition was to create works through the connection of different characters in a musical piece. As seen in the image below these connection would occur in the form of arches, which vary in size and span according to the distance between relating parts in the musical composition. Wattenberg achieved these forms by implementing the music in the form of a MIDI file, which was then separated and analyzed in subsets of “tracks.”

Once this process is done in several iterations through the course of the entire piece, the resulting work is a large set of connecting arches with different dynamic qualities.

(The image above shows a diagram of the Goldberg Variations. The AABB structure of the composition can be seen in the way that the piece can be broken up into two separate parts.)

(The image above shows one completed work from the Shape of Song exhibition that captures the different connections and repetitions of musical components in Vivaldi’s Autumn, Four Seasons composition. )

What I find most interesting about this form of data visualization is the way in which it looks to find connections in something that seemingly has a set beginning and end. The way in which the data is visualized in this manner shows another interesting way of interpreting music and how it is structured by taking something that we hear and mapping it into something that we can see.

 

Read More:

http://turbulence.org/Works/song/method/method.html

http://www.bewitched.com/song.html

 

This project, The Rhythm of Food, is a visualization of google searches of food. The circle, going 360 degrees, maps to each month of the year, the color of the block represents a specific year, and the radius of the block is the number of google searches. So the farther the block is, the larger the number of google searches of that particular food in that month of the specified year. This leads to patterns that are easy to spot – for example, summer fruits are more often searched in, you guessed it, the summer.

This project is clean, beautiful, and informative. It also captures big patterns and small idiosyncrasies. “Sour Cherry” is not only a fruit, but also a song by The Kills that was popular in February of 2008. This small detail is captured by this visualization, illustrating how the project does an amazing job of capturing both the large and the small, and does so in a way that is easy to understand.

The Rhythm of Food

Source: https://flowingdata.com/2018/10/02/shifting-death/

I figured that I would put the source first this time, because WordPress’s size limit makes it very difficult to read what’s in the infographic- also because the infographic is animated. This week’s project that I would like to discuss is a very interesting information visualization. The project involves columns of different age groups and shifting rectangles that detail the causes of death according to how common it is. The rectangles shift over time as the project moves through the years. I admire this project quite a bit because the artwork’s portrays vast amount of information in such a limited space and does it quite elegantly. I admire it because with the usage of the project, people will be able to see highly relevant information that is otherwise difficult to find out about.
As for the algorithm that generated this work, I assume that there is a counting variable that counts specific input from the vast data there is. Also, there would have to be another sorting algorithm that ranks the most common causes of death. Lastly, there would be a draw function that animates the data in an interesting way.
The creator’s artistic sensibilities manifested into the final form when he is able to display so many aspects and dimensions of data into a single format. The data that the work describes, age group, gender, time-line, usage of color to represent the rate within age group, and causes of death. I think that there is true mastery within such simplicity.