Category: LookingOutwards-07

The Flight Patterns visualizations are the result of experiments leading to the project Celestial Mechanics by Scott Hessels and Gabriel Dunne. FAA data was parsed and plotted using the Processing programming environment, which is a flexible software sketchbook and a language for learning how to code within the context of the visual arts. And the frames were composited with Adobe After Effects and/or Maya. The project does not only represent data visually but also experiments with the possibility of representation technique. As a result, the outcome turns out to be more than just information but is also informative art piece that has aesthetic value. 

For this week’s Looking Outward on informational visualization, I looked at a chart developed by CMU professor Chris Harrison on Wikipedia article popularities over a 10-month span. Wikipedia has long been an infamous news source, but the influence it’s had on information gathering and research is undeniable. Thus, Professor Harrison saw Wikipedia as a way to better understand how users browsed the internet in 2006. As he described it, visualizing this information allowed us to get a better read on the internet’s “pulse” and what activity was trending at the time. 

The graph is organized by month for every month from August 2006 to May 2007. Each month is organized into its top 50 search categories/results, sorted by descending order of frequency. In total, each of these bars represents all the traffic to Wikipedia for top 50 pages. For example, in September 2006, the top Wikipedia search result was “Steve Irwin” (the Crocodile Hunter sadly passed away during this month), while the 50th most popular result was “Podcasting” (huh!).

Prof Harrison’s information visualization does an excellent job utilizing design principles to convey meaning. He uses visual hierarchy, both through font size and bar size, to show which search results were prominent each month. He uses color to help differentiate “blips” from “mid-life,” “new,” and “end.” He also uses gray trend-lines to showcase which search results are common across months to show changes in activity. And finally, he utilizes a consistent scale with clear labels and axes to indicate the magnitude of the different search results. Overall, Prof Harrison’s information visualization display utilizes both design principles and data-management strategies that make it a compelling and power piece of information.

SOURCE:

http://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Visualizations/WikiTop50

Virality by Rachel Binx visualizes the spread of facebook stories by analyzing the origin of the story to its various branchings. Her team focused on the three most shared images on facebook (all from George Takei’s page) and tried to emulate the energy of these images using WebGL.

With the help of Zach Watson, Binx uses WebGL as a framework for her project to produce the visualization as well as iterate on various animation styles. WebGL, short for Web Graphics Library, is a JavaScript interface for rendering interactive graphics on a web browser. It uses a 3d project exported from various 3d softwares such as Blender or Autodesk Maya to produce an interactive visualization accessible from most, if not all, browsers. The software allows Binx to experiment with different rendering options such as the color, opacity, degree, density of the branches

The animated data visualization starts from the origin of the viral facebook images and analyzes its various branches, with each re-share of the image becoming its own branch. Some re-shares show a burst of energy with the re-share almost becoming its own viral element, while others create new branches in the visual form of arcs of various angles.

I found this work to be interesting in its relevance to modern day social media tactics and its resourcefulness. Social media can be considered one of the most efficient ways to spread information to various groups of people today. Many businesses and corporations take advantage of the excessive use of social media to exploit users as well as spread data or any other types of information. To be able to track the pathway of a viral image on facebook can indicate useful advertising tactics, as well as interesting feedback and conclusions for not only companies, but also for the average social media user.

virality