aesthetic

a website dedicated to the visualization of baby name frequencies & geographical distributions. baby names can be mapped by popularity over time or popularity state by state, while groups of names, patterns or variants can be charted cumulatively.

[link: nametrends.net|via kottke.org]

see also baby name voyager.

each element sample is individually embedded inside a solid acrylic block, while all the blocks are arranged in the grid of the periodic table, priced EU 6,890, US $8,550. more interactive versions of display walls exist as well.

[link: element-collection.com|via bornrich.org & boingboing.net]

a graphical visualization of the electronic score Artikulation by György Ligeti from 1958(!).

the music predates the modern analog synthesizers of the late 60’s & early 70’s, as the sound sources are a combination of generated sound and tape manipulation. the score is based on a timeline measured in seconds, using shapes & colors instead of notes on a staff. dots represent impulses & combs for noise. colors stand for variations in timbre & pitch.

a detailed infographic map that displays the United States Patent & Trademark Office patent classification, which organizes 3 million patents into about 160,000 distinct patent classes. exemplarily shown are 2 patents, together with, respectively, their prior art & impact.

the taxonomy visualization shows the organization schema as a hierarchy in which sublevels are indented according to their depth in the hierarchy. item properties are represented by bar graphs on the left-hand side of the schema. item & class interrelations are denoted by line overlays.

[link: gigapan.org & scimaps.org]

a visualization that allows users to quickly identify the most significant differences in content between 2 lists of Web pages, meant to help comparing the effects of censorship policies on search engines. one interface simply compares the image thumbnails of 2 identical search queries by putting them next to each other. the textual visualization shows the individual tag clouds of the 50 terms that are most particular to each query's results.

while the goal seems quite intriguing, the visualizations seem to require extensive visual comparisons. any ideas how the authors could make the interface more efficient?

[link: uic.edu|thnkx Su]

a set of giant posters located in Madrid, London, Berlin, Brussels & Milan that monitor the noise level on a high-traffic roads. ambient noise levels are displayed via decibel meters connected to LED screens embedded in billboards, in homage to Noise Awareness Day (April 16). the posters were part of AEG-Electrolux's advertising campaign supporting its new silent washing machine. the accompanying Web site also compares decibel levels of the major urban areas on line graphs to learn more about the detriments of noise pollution.

"Local school kids are taking it a step further and are deliberately shouting at the sign in unison in order to make the numbers change. The Manager of the night club is finding the poster helpful too – he is taking photos of the sign in the early hours of the morning to show the local council that he is not making too much noise."

a collaborative data visualization for people to explore recent employment trends in the state of Minnesota. in a slight twist on the collective Many Eyes & Swivel visualizations, users can share their questions & insights online. the dataset comprises the Minnesota employment numbers by industry from 2000-2007.

[links: publicradio.org (bottom of page) & sense.us (stand alone) & flare.prefuse.org (toolkit underneath)|thnkx Jeffrey]

an original book label design specifically designed for structuring big academic libraries. a book's cover loses it's importance in a vast library collection, squashed between "this" book & "that" book, resulting in a mismatch of textures, typefaces & colors. as a result, it is the spine that one generally look's for & more specifically, its call number label. with so much pressure on the call number label, the tiny, inconsistent sticker to be slapped on inconsistently seems designed carelessly.

instead, the wrap around label system system uses the 1st letter of the call number to classify every book into 1 of 21 general subject matters, resulting in an information book shelf grid. colors are assigned to the subjects as a rainbow gradient, while all additional information is listed on the back

the new music video for Radiohead's song "House Of Cards", of which the images were generated without cameras or film, but with 3 different real-time 3D laser scanners that are normally used to capture geometrical terrains & objects. several low-tech approaches were used to deliberately "break up" the data. anyone is invited to & upload the original data & then post the visual results.

be sure not to miss the "Making of" video after the break.

a giant tethered helium balloon that displays real-time reports of atmospheric pollution by a colorful lighting system, which can be seen from more than 20 km (12.4 miles) away. the balloon's color signifies the ambient air quality using 3 projectors that are located in the middle of the balloon. for example, red signifies highly polluted air, orange for polluted, yellow for moderate, light green for clean, & green for very clean.

[link: aerophile.com|via physorg.com & ecofriend.org]

see also:
. nuage vert

a collective experiment in brand perception, by querying online participants for keywords as a first reaction on a collection of popular brand logos. the collective results per individual brand are displayed as simple tag clouds.

[link: brandtags.net]

see also collaborative word association.

an online 3D video search portal & viewer with an integrated real-time information dashboard that tracks in detail the usage of videos on Youtube, Dailymotion & Flickr, including average use time, visit number, average play time & video view number. in addition, users can select videos on a 3D-like carousel, or create a 3D scatterplot-like(?) diagram

[link: tkaap.com & tkaap.com (blog)]

a mechatronic data sculpture made up of 714 metal balls that translates a virtual design process into the space around it. seemingly weightless, the kinetic sculpture moves through a cycle of free abstractions and typical BMW vehicle forms.

watch a high-rez movie here or the YouTube version after the break.

[link: artcom.de|via engadget.com & bmwcca.org]

reminds me of:

an(other) online visual search interface that represents search results for music, videos & images queries by a network-like diagram. results appear alongside related items, which can then be further refined.

[link: flokoon.com & flokoon.com (blog)|via fr.techcrunch.com|thnkx Denis]

see also:
. viewzi
. brynsbrain, redzee & searchMe
. oskope visual search & shopping

a fascinating live visualisation of recent emotional expressions written on the private weblogs published on blogger.com. emotional expressions are parsed according to a list of synonyms, which then physically transform an abstract shape-shifting object.

textual expressions are assigned to 1 of 8 basic human emotions, which are represented as a 3D cone consisting of 24 distinct areas. this abstract diagram forms the basic shape of "pulse", a physical object that is able to enlarge in 24 different directions. each time a specific expressionistic emotion is found in a blog entry written during the last minute, the shapeshifting object transforms itself, so that that the new physical volume represents a piece of the world's current emotional condition.

several free software applications that create so-called Cinema Redux photos that distill a whole film down to 1 single image. in practice, snapshots are taken from a movie at 1-second intervals & stitched together as 8x6 pixel frames into 1 single image.

[link: brendandawes.com (Processing) & threewordtitle.com (for Mac OS X)]

see also:
. film frame motion analysis
. long video games exposures
. film dialog particles

a series of 4 different physical "sound sculptures": 3D artworks based on audio analysis & custom software that extract meaningful data from sound signals, to create unique mappings between the audio & other media. the sculptures are based on audioworks by Freiband (Nl, Frans de Waard), & Alexander Rishaug (No), & were created using digital fabrication technology such as rapid prototyping, CNC & laser cutting, which allow for the direct translation of a digital model into physical form.

[link: flickr.com & 5daysoff.nl]

see also sound chair audio sculpture.

several visualizations of real-time coffee consumption tracked by hacking a real (& online) coffee machine. the arcs graph shows the average time caffeine remains in the body. the circles applet represents individual days as unique circles. circles are positioned based on the time coffee was taken, while color saturation & size convey the quantity of coffee.

an open, online API, allows anyone to create alternative visualizations of the coffee usage dataset.

[link: colmeia.tv|via flowingdata.com & thnkx colmeia]

a visual bookshelf browser of over 21,000 books from Amazon's catalog. books are visualized as stacks in shelves, with covers ordered alphabetically by author & organized by genre. following the typical Google Map interaction metaphor,users can click & drag across Zoomii's landscape of shelves, zoom in & out, or select a book's cover to receive basic statistical information.

[link: zoomii.com|via arstechnica.com]

see also:
. Amazon book map
. another Amazon book map

a network visualization that shows the flow of knowledge between scientific fields based on the weighting of citations by subject field. a static map represents between fields. the dataset is based on Thomson Scientific's 2004 Journal Citation Reports (JCR), consisting of 6,434,916 citations from 6128 journals.

orange circles represent fields, with larger, darker circles indicating larger field size as measured by eigenfactor. blue arrows represent citation flow between fields. an arrow from field A to field B indicates citation traffic from A to B, with larger, darker arrows indicating higher citation volume

[link: eigenfactor.org (interactive) & eigenfactor.org (static)|via network.nature.com]

a "social experiment" that harnesses the collective intelligence of the web to visualize & uncover hidden relationships among future & historical events. users are invited to leave predictions of future events, while an encompassing network-like visualizations allows the identification of patterns "by connecting the past, present & future".

[link: weboffate.com|thnkx Paul]

see also:
. community opinion graphs
. collaborative news prediction
. geographical buzz map

all the water in the world (or 1.4087 billion cubic kilometres of it) including sea water, ice, lakes, rivers, ground water, clouds, etc. (left). all the air in the atmosphere (or 5140 trillion tonnes of it) gathered into a ball at sea-level density (right). both shown on the same scale as the Earth.

[link: phiffer.com|via boingboing.net & benfry.com]

see also relative size of our world.

[infosthetics @ EPFL] a light-emitting meeting table that monitors specific aspects of cverbal onversations (e.g. amount of time spent on topics or the relative amount of time a person talks) captured via directional microphones & that displays a real-time visual feedback of the conversation state using arrays of colored LED lights.

beneath the frosted-glass surface of the table, an electronic circuit board with 128
individually-addressable multi-color LEDs provides a low-resolution visual display. the "Reflect" table aims to encourage to collaborators to participate in a more balanced manner, without providing precise suggestions on what to do next.

a data visualisation tool which tries to analyze the debate sparked by the BBC White season of programs which aired on BBC2. the interface shows a number of particles floating around in space. each particle represents a sentence taken from the debate & is assigned a color corresponding to the type of emotion (i.e. anger, fear, hurt, confusion, happiness & caring) word found in the sentence.

particles also have a size which reflects the intensity of the emotion expressed & a brightness which indicates the average consensus (agreement/disagreement) on the comment. comments can be spatially clustered by their attributes & particles can be filtered to show exactly what the user would like to see at any given time.

an interactive interface that displays VCM (Visualisation des Connaissances Medicales; visualization of medical knowledge) icons organized around an anatomical diagram of the human body with additional mental, etiological & physiological areas. the interface explicitly represents information implicit in the drug monograph, such as the absence of a given contraindication (i.e. the pictogram will be grayed out).

the interface includes 3 identical looking “Mister VCM” interfaces (placed beneath each other): one for absolute contraindications, one for the cautions for use & one for adverse effects. physicians made fewer errors with “Mister VCM” than with text (factor of 1.7) & responded to questions 2.2 times faster.

does it seem an information/infographic designer was involved?