Category: Visualization

10×10 / 100 Words and Pictures that Define the Time / by Jonathan J. Harris is another cool visualization text experiment by the developer of WORDCOUNT. It analyzes the news and puts up 10 by 10 images that represent the keywords. It is done with a Flash interface.

At the Burlington Art Centre I attended a day-long workshop on “The Art of Change” where the “mind mapping” software Mindjet: Mind Manager was demonstrated. Mind mapping apparently was invented by Tony Buzan as a way of unleashing the potential of the mind. See, Buzan Centres – Mind Mapping – Mind Map Definition. The presenter oversold mind mapping and it is not clear that visual thinking software running on a small screen is preferable to a good big peice of software or whiteboard, but at its heart mind mapping seems to be hypertext for thinking – drawing graphs of ideas. What is is strange is how this business technique has spawned software similar to what has come from the hypertext community, software like Storyspace, which bills itself as serious hypertext for writers.
Continue reading Mind Mapping

The Next Generation Foundation has a Flash based site that is interesting both for its design and content. This organization was set up by the CEO of Lego and, for an organization focused on “creativity” has a stiffling “Terms of use” (see the link off the main page.) The foundation focuses on children’s play and creativity. To get a sense of their mission (to sell more toys?) read the bizarre “Manifesto and Call to Action” by Seymour Papert. Here is a quote,

There exists today an unprecedented opportunity for synergy between the goals of parenting and the goals of industrial entrepreneurship, between spiritual concerns about the meaning of life and political concerns about the policies of nations, between the cultivation of the arts and the preparation of young people for the workplace.

One neat feature they have is an interactive Map of Creativity which has a circular interface for navigating projects that recommended as innovative and helping children play.
This came StÈfan’s blog

Camille Utterback is an artist who, with Romy Achituv, in 1999 developed an interactive installation, Text Rain where text rains down on your video image and gathers/spills off your video presence. Simple, beautiful (at least as seen online) and an early text play visualization.

Bruce Mau of S, M, L, XL has a show in Vancouver coming to the AGO in Toronto called Massive Change and a web site with the same name. I hope the show is better than the site which is less-than-massive. Most of the web site is light on content with high-concept pop-corn ideas followed by blog-like “did you know” factoids. One part of the site, however, makes up for the rest – there is a number of full-length streaming audio interviews from a radio show at CIUT in Toronto with interesting people on the change. The creator of the Massive Change – Radio show, Jennifer Leonard redeems the site with content.
I assume Bruce Mau’s content is in the show or the book – it’s not in the silly plastic plates for Umbra that look like a massive advertising opportunity. Let me guess who one of the sponsors of the show is.

A National Post reporter asked Mau about what is overrated and he said, “I think the first image that pops into your head is exactly what is overrated: the visual.” See, National Post, “Design not in the eye of the beholder”, by Vanessa Farquharson, Oct. 4, 2004. The site proves his point – what I can see is overrated, what I can listen to is not.
Now I have to figure out how to get the hours of interviews onto my iPod. It’s time for an “Import Into iTunes” feature.

Google Cartography is an applet Richard Jones which produces a visualization of streets and links from the Google API. It starts from a seed street and finds streets connected to the seed through Google.
Continue reading Google Cartography

SonART is a toolkit for sonnification research which my friend Bill Farkas has been working on. Neat stuff.
For some examples see remapping sensory data
Continue reading SonArt: Sonnification Toolbox

The 3D Visualization Technologies Research Group is part of the National Research Council Institute for Information Technology. They have developed laser scanners that can digitize spaces and objects. (See The Virtual Theater). They have also developed technologies for generating 3D spaces from images/paintings and technologies for searching 3D databases.
Continue reading NRC: 3D Technologies

Govcom.org Foundation Amsterdam is a group that are developing ideas and software around the mapping of debates. They use the Web as evidence for mining and visualizing social issues. It is welcome to see socially interesting projects around data mining and visualization.
Continue reading govcom.org: mapping debates

StÈfan Sinclair posted to a conference a good list of exemplary visualization projects:
Web browsing
OPTE (http://www.opte.org/)
Map.net (http://maps.map.net )
kartOO.com
anemone (http://acg.media.mit.edu/people/fry/anemone/)
Grokker.com
Reference and bibliographic visualization
Visual Thesaurus (http://www.visualthesaurus.com/online/ )
RefViz Galaxy & Matrix views (http://www.refviz.com/)
Document structure
XML Structure Navigator (http://sunfire.arts.ualberta.ca/%7Estefan/hcr/HyperPo/XMLStructure/?url=http%3A//www.tei-c.org/P5/Test/teilite.rng)
I think its time to start reflecting on the semiotics of visualization.