I am a huge fan of Jonathan Harris, ever since I found out about We Feel Fine. It just blew me away. Recently, the creator of this and other outstanding works of art and visualization launched I Want You to Want Me, an installation at the MoMA in New York. Harris describes the project as simply as
I Want You To Want Me explores the search for love and self in the world of online dating.
There’s no online version for the unfortunate of us who cannot be in NYC to attend the exhibition to enjoy, but the project’s website is most certainly worth checking out.
If by any chance you’re not familiar with Harris’ work, I highly recommend visiting his sit and viewing each project with the attention they deserve. It can be quite rewarding.
* I had this post kept as a draft for a while, and in the meantime, Harris released The Polaroid Project, which I’m still to visit in depth.
Other pieces that really caught my attention were Walmor Corrêa’s Unheimlich, a set of four paintings of mythological Brazilian characters, painted as if in an anatomy atlas.
Below is Ondina, a kind of tropical mermaid, a nature spirit that lives in rivers, lakes and seas. (Please visit the artist’s website for more pictures—also in Portuguese).
I find this an interesting approach in visualizing data. I mean, it is fictional, but is data nonetheless; the kind of creativity required to imagine and them represent the inner anatomy of a mythological character is quite admirable. It’s what Tolkien does with words, only done with pictures (though in a smaller scale, I’d say).
I think this opens my mind to an infinite number of possibilities in visualization with and art purpose in mind: what’s being visualized does not need to be real, only it’s purpose. And sometimes the aesthetic experiment itself is worth it.
In a less formal and funnier approach, American illustrator Michael Paulus goes bone deep inside cartoon characters:
The title is a direct quote from the TED page presenting Dr. Hans Rosling presentation back in 2006, as one of the most accurate possible. This may come as old news to some, but my last post on Dr. Jill Taylor’s TED presentation made me realize I should have written something about this at some point in this blog.
So, if you’re not familiar with the fun and outstandingly engaging speaker that is Dr. Rosling—or his work with GapMinder, for that matter—behold one of the best talks you will ever watch:
This is the good stuff. This is as good as data visualization gets. It may lack a bit in the aesthetic sense of it, but doesn’t really make a difference. Because this is dense, useful, mattering information, presented in ways people never even imagined.
I mean, there are a lot of data visualization projects with beautiful results, working with sometimes interesting data, but it dwells frequently in process or tools experimentation. I’m no critic: I’m a huge admirer; hell, I had been actually working on a few experiments of myself. But this is a whole different ball park.
This is the kind of stuff that molds minds, that feeds leaders with the information they need to make good, evidence-based decisions for their people. It’s the kind of tools that promotes the insight that allows populations to demand from their policy makers choices based on the experiences of other countries. That allows people to get their mind around seemingly unsolvable problems and vote and act their way through it.
You add on top of that the passion with which Dr. Rosling’s narrates the development of countries and world events with the excitement of a sportscaster. This involves you with information with enthusiasm in a surprising way.
It doesn’t end there, since in a brief presentation he manages to explain clearly the differences between means and goals, and how we most frequently mix them up, making choices that are not as productive as we think.
That is as good as it gets.
And, as a bonus, Dr. Rosling’s returning talk on TED2007, with some new insights:
Please don’t miss these. You’ll thank me later.
And if you want to check on how GapMinder is doing, check their website.
A very informative, fun, data visualization application, with a rather high data density in a friendly interface. Totally unpretensious, as far as I can see. Perhaps the rectangles that make up the vertical bars could be a bit easier to hover with the mouse, but otherwise I’d say there’s no problem whatsoever with it.
And serves as well as a good example of use of Flash in a situation in which other technologies—notably JavaScript—could be cumbersome and not achieve the same results.
It may not make any difference what my results are, since I’m from Brazil (even though the US presidential elections affects people everywhere in the globe), but I was very satisfied to see to which candidate I’m most ideologically aligned with.
It may be old news to some, but it’s quite a discovery for me.
I’m amazed with the density of information Scher conveys in her paintings, exploring very diverse aspects of the regions she is depicting in the maps, from income differences in New York City to the population composition of cities in the Middle East.
It resembles very much a lot of generative art projects, only made by hand. This brings a subjective and case-by-case kind of approach to the details that allows her to choose what to bring forth in a way a algorithm most probably couldn’t. Not to mention the infinitely more interesting texture that her brushstrokes produce, compared to the frequently dr—though frequently beautiful—results achieved with the computer.
On the other hand, the work has a very solid conceptual basis. From the exhibition essay:
“These are absolutely, one hundred percent inaccurate,” Paula Scher declares of her colossal map paintings. Then, after a pause: “But not on purpose.” Another pause: they’re actually “sort of right.” And therein lies their bracing paradox. Scher’s sites—Manhattan, Israel, and India among them—are instantly recognizable. Scanning the allover expanse of the canvases, you might easily pick out the swath of Central Park, the void of the Dead Sea, the dot of Mumbai. But they are also highly interpretive. The colors and graphic styles allude to loose, mostly media-fed impressions. Consider Middle East, where black paint predominates, reflecting both the dire conflict in the region and the oil underlying it.
If you know where to get more information about her art, and about other people that carry on projects similar to this in any level, please comment below.
Update: Erik Natzke does something that might be the other way around: Flash Paintings. Those are pieces of Actionscript generative art which end result get’s very close to the texture of acrylic or oil paint. Definitely worth the visit.
