Data Visualization As Generative Narrative » steve

Newswire API Visualization

steve — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:51:41 +0000

OK I’ve spent WAY too much time on this since class and I don’t really have a lot more to show than some interaction, so I’m calling it quits for now and here is the final project. Getting used to the New York Times API’s was fun and not too difficult, however creating visualizations in C++ is proving to be a very big challenge. I need to accomplish this for my thesis though so as painful as this was I really learned a lot and built a lot of things that I can use in the future to (hopefull) speed up the process significantly

The blog won’t let me embed vimeo video, so here are the screenshots and you can check out the video here

Reading Response: Assignment 1

steve — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 04:09:46 +0000

Tufte Article:

I have read some Tufte before, and in the past I have been either somewhat bored with what he had to say or felt like he was on a bit of a soapbox, preaching “his way or the highway”. This article has a bit of an undertone of his righteousness, however I think that the underlying idea of addition by subtraction and the ratio of “data-ink” to “useless-ink” is both interesting and useful. While he seems to be stressing an extreme of almost none of what he calls useless-ink, I think the real ratio for a display that is both informative and attractive lies somewhere around 50/50 to 70/30 in favor of data-ink.

Christiane Paul Article:

This article was interesting in that it both analyzed the existence of some sort of database in almost every form of new media art as well as giving a plethora of examples. The article does feel a bit dated, but that is somewhat unavoidable it seems in this day and age, and is somewhat unfair seeing how it appears to have been published in or around 2004/5 based on the examples. I thought that it was interesting how the article mentioned different types of databases beyond the normal relational databases and gave examples of these.

Inspiration: The Whale Hunt

steve — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 03:54:25 +0000

“The Whale Hunt” is a super interesting data visualization project by Jonathan Harris which pushes the boundaries between the real world and the database world (as discussed in the Christiane Paul paper). This project consists of an entire trip from new york city to alaska that ultimately results in the capturing, killing, and butchering of a whale for an Eskimo village’s winter food. The documentation is presented in a variety of ways, with each photo being classified as a certain emotion. The user has the ability to sort the photo and documentation in a variety of ways that allow them to experience different emotions.

I am sure that I’m leaving something out, but by watching the artist himself talk about the work you can get the whole story. Here is a Ted Talk, go to about 5:45 to see the discussion involving this project.

This blog won’t let me embed video, so Here is a link to the Ted Talk