Forma Fluens collects over 100,000 doodle drawings from the game QuickDraw. The drawings represent participants’ direct thinking and offer a glimpse of collective expression of the society. By using this data collection, the artists tried to explore if we could learn how people see and remember things in relation to their local culture with the help of data analysis.
The three modes of Forma Fluens, DoodleMaps, Points in Movement, and Icono Lap, all present different insights into how people from each culture process their observations. DoodleMaps show the doodle results organized with t-SNE map, Points in Movement displays animations of how millions of drawings overlap in similar ways, and Icono Lap generates new icons from the overlap of these doodle drawings.
The part that draws my attention the most is how distinct convergence and divergence can happen with objects that we thought we might have common understandings of. Another highlight from the project is how the doodle results tell stories of different cultures, which may suggest that in a similar cultural atmosphere people observe and express in similar ways.