LO – Aaron Koblin

Eamonn Burke

I once again return to the work of Aaron Koblin, because I find his work to be the most interesting subjects and the best representations of the listed designers. Here he visualizes AT&T call traffic in NYC, which is a fascinating way to represent geography and globalization. As with the last Koblin project I used, I love this piece because it’s at the intersection of human behavior and design. It depicts the social phenomenon of urbanization and globalization, as physical distance becomes negligible and we become one mind.

 I think Koblin used his creative sensibilities to convey this idea of a collective brain, by evoking the concept of travelling neurons to suggest connectivity. He also clearly conveys the “hotspots” and distinguishes the different types of calls by using brightness and color. 

I would guess that the software Koblin used here tracks call information including distance and location, and then uses this data to plot functions of curves that are projected onto a 3D world model, with the height of the curve depending on the distance of the call.