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Flight Patterns from Aaron Koblin on Vimeo.
This project is called Flight Patterns and it’s by Aaron Koblin. I believe it was created in 2009 (10 years ago). The piece visualizes the movement of airplanes over North America over time. I really appreciate the simplicity of the piece and how it affectively visualizes important data without being confusing or overwhelming. As well, even though it’s just data, it’s beautiful and mesmerizing to stare at. It creates a strong emotional reaction for me as I can feel myself traveling from place to place on a plane when looking at the piece. It reminds me of the airport and how it feels to go someplace new and return home afterwards. The piece was created by parsing and plotting data from the Federal Aviation Administration using Processing, a Javascript web application framework. The creator’s artistic sensibilities manifest in the algorithm by being able to simplify and visualize large groups of data in a way that can be effectively coded in a visual manner.