Hand-Cut Street Maps of World Cities

You might not be aware, but it is federal election time back in Australia. And one of Australia’s most successful and internationally exported TV formats, “The Chaser” (well, next to Neighbours, MasterChef, Border Security, My Restaurant Rules and Bondi Rescue, all widely available on European TV) has transformed its name into “Yes! We Can-berra”. The satirical program is scheduled as a sort of warming-up act just before a popular live political discussion program Lateline.

Oh well, but what does it have to do with infographics, you say? Well, you should watch its 30-second intro clip below. If only all election statistics could be reported this way…

Thnkx Andrea!

Following the hyperzoom style of visualization artist Chris Jordan, the movie attempts to represent the US military budget of $549 billion dollars as a heap of 88,548 Abram M1 tanks. This all fully rendered as sharp 3D computer graphics imagery (CGI) including some simulated gravitational physics.

Watch the movie below.

“1945-1998” [ctbto.org] by Isao Hashimoto (2003) displays all the 2,053 nuclear explosions and tests conducted in various parts of the globe, over time. The year and month are shown at the top right corner. Each detonation is flashed on a stylized world map, accompanied by a minimalistic computer sound. The years roll by at one month per second.

What starts of as a slow succession of a few blimps, rapidly becomes a display of fireworks.

Watch the movie below.

Reminds me of Breathing Earth.

Common Sense [commonsense-art.com] is a nicely crafted art exhibit examining the most important aspects that determine the American Dream. Through a collection of 13 different data-driven works, the exhibit questions assumptions about the history of the U.S, shows the common goals and dreams of its citizens and illuminates some of the inequalities in U.S. society.

For instance, the “Dow Jones Industrial Infantry” visualizes the size of the 30 companies through little green army men, and compares their human scale to their market capitalization, or total value, of their stock. “Slice of the Pie” is a physical pie chart showing the true relative sacrifice each household makes. Some pieces require a magnifying glass to be truly perceivable. “Styrofoam Cups, Champagne Glasses” highlights the ratio between the average salary and the average CEO salary in America. “Investing in the Future” is a wooden puzzle of US states, of which the height denotes the percent of each state’s median income goes toward funding public education.

Thnkx Craig!

Other recent interesting exhibitions include:
. Mapping 30 Years of Ars Electronica
. Level Green
. Work, Meaning and Care
. Information Aesthetics Showcase

Augmented reality is all the hype know, in particular with the technology ditching the required goggles for cool mobile phones screens, and the like. The short movie below offers a future vision of augmenting your normal vision in the kitchen when commercial branding and infographics have all the freedom, and “above the fold” finally receives a meaning in physical reality.

Via Data Driven and Flowing Data.

See also:
. Logorama
. The Future of Data Overload

The idea behind the “Atlas of Rome” 35m wide projection wall is to encourage passers-by to experience multiple views on the city they live in, and to explore the visions that architects, artists, institutions and, in general, other people have had on urban spaces. The project’s ambition is considerable: several other international cities have been contacted to create other instances of the Atlas, with the idea of creating a data visualization system that interconnects remote urban spaces. Imagine, as an example, a data visualization through which people could interact in real-time with the people in other cities of the world.

All data shown is based on an online content management system that was set up as a collaborative process with the city’s institutions, groups and individuals, and which allows all these stakeholders to add or alter any multimedia information about on their projects, actions, visions and urban plans.

This information is represented by 4 different data visualizations which are rendered onto a large-scale architectural installation. In the “Linearity” visualization, the visions take the form of mechanisms grabbing their life energy from the interactions among individuals and themes. Spheres represent visions and, while moving, they are constantly fed from the themes that they explore. In “Neo Map“, circles represent the visions, dislocated according to their reciprocal geographical locations and connected by subjects. In “Bridges” visions orbit around the respective themes, in a cyclic sequence. Visions and themes dynamically show bridges and interconnections, according to he subjects and actions that they share. Lastly, “Timescape” transforms the passage of time into a landscape. Visions are represented in their time dimension, occupying spaces that are proportional to their duration and sequence. A geography defined through time and correlation is made visible and interactable.

12 different computers were used to drive the continuous 35m-wide projection, the server components and the control logics for the multi-touch screens. The technologies involved have been developed by FakePress and will soon be released as Open Source software (GPL2 license).

Watch some demonstration movies below, or get more information here and here.

See also Ring°Wall.

E Pluribus Unum [chrisjordan.com] from Chris Jordan is a summary representation of all the names of organizations in the world that are devoted to peace, environmental stewardship, social justice, and the preservation of diverse and indigenous cultures. It consists of a 24×24 feet large aluminum panel onto which all the names were laser-etched.

The data consists of a database of about 130,000 known organizations which were duplicated a few times to make a million names total, the conservative estimate for the actual number of such organizations worldwide. Craig S. Kaplan from The University of Waterloo in Ontario developed a program that assembled all the names into a single image. The only input from Chris into this process was design-related, to choose elements such as font size and spacing.

The purpose of this data art piece is to visualize the vast network of altruistic human organizations in every country, city, and community around the world, all working in parallel together. Despite their enormous diversity of size, focus, and geographic location, these organizations are all united around a set of core values that places compassion and stewardship as highest priorities.

Via @EllnMllr.

The concept of visualization as a medium is great, but how far can information graphics be pushed until it falls off the cliff? The Fusion 41 Competition [fusion41.com] is a recent example of the world of advertising focusing on the visual attraction of data visualization. The competition “amassed a wealth of raw data generated from all of the teams and activities“, which were then “brought to life” in poster-size infographics.

The mass of raw numbers mentioned before include things as “Most water balloon tosses lengthwise over a car in 1 minute“, “Refrigerator magnets stuck to a Ford Fusion” and “Fastest time to finish a big gulp“, and several others.

Your opinion?