I just love maps

Heat maps are cool.  You can play with the interactive version of this map, by clicking the link below.

McKinsey and Company ‘partnered with the World Economic Forum to create an “Innovation Heat Map,” by identifying factors that are common to successful innovation hubs’.

River of words

We live in a society of cut-up words; I’m interested in the aesthetics of data visualization and what we can make of fragments…made even more interesting when combined with social networking and powerful databases. Check out:

WeFeelFine. Pretty? Useless? Pretty useless? Read more about it at Museum 2.0.

Moveable Type. An installation located in the lobby of The New York Times building. A cool way to regurgitate words.

Digerati – the information elite and lovink it!

I’m part of the creative industries and fairly immersed in network culture. I know this, but it does not sit well. Funny that!

For my latest quest, I’m on the look-out for information about the impact of digital technologies on media practice. As I delve further and further into this web of…the Web, actually, I’m struggling to come up with ‘the goods’! On the plus side however, I’ve re-discovered the thoughts and theories of Geert Lovink – first encountered in my undergrad ‘Digital Media’ class in 2002. The ‘future’ we discussed then, is now. Geert’s articles in my course reader helped my understanding of all things ‘new media’ immensely back then. Yesterday, as I again seek knowledge of the future in the now (Web 3.0 anyone?), his name popped up – again. I found Geert’s archive of ‘thoughts’ on the web and promptly wrote a post about it. Today, I’ve come full circle and wandered into his current home at the Institute of Network Cultures. Serendipity!

Hello Professor Lovink. You’ve appeared at just the right moment and sets me ‘on course’ again. The past and future collide. There ain’t nuthin’ new in that!

San Francisco Emotion Map

This is what I like about the world today. A lot of information presented in one layer…but on closer inspection is densely multi-layered. Simple complexity. This biomap was created by Christian Nold. Somehow I want to incorporate these ideas into my Honours project. I like the idea of ‘tracking’ home movies to see what type of pattern takes shape and meaning is revealed.

Christian Nold is the creator of this biomap.

The San Francisco Emotion Map is the culmination of Christian Nold’s five-week residency and participatory art project that involved a total of 98 participants exploring San Francisco’s Mission District neighborhood using the Bio Mapping device he invented. During his residency at Southern Exposure, Christian Nold worked in the organization’s Mission Street storefront gallery encouraging visitors to stop by and use the devices during the weekdays and on Saturdays when he conducted intensive workshops. The project invited the public to go for a walk using the device, which records the wearer’s physiological response to their surroundings. The results of these walks are represented on this map using colored dots and participant’s personal annotations. The San Francisco Emotion Map is a collective attempt at creating an emotional portrait of a neighborhood and envisions new tools that allow people to share and interpret their own bio data.

Black Balloons

I’m sure everyone is ‘over’ winter, working and the daily grind. Take time out, sit back and watch William Lamson. I found this link to his videos on Rocketboom. I didn’t know balloons could be so amusing.

VEER INC.

Veer are a very cool company that provides visual elements for use in professional creative work, such as graphic design, motion design, advertising and filmmaking. Their products include stock photography, illustration, typefaces, and unique merchandise. This New York outfit is very sassy and won the 2008 Webby Awards Winners for Best Use of Typography.Who needs substance, when you have so much style?

Visual Complexity project

visualcomplexity is a beautiful website showing the visualization of complex networks. The project’s main goal is ‘to leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines, as diverse as Biology, Social Networks or the World Wide Web’. Some are not genuine complex networks, but ‘they either provide advancement in terms of visual depiction techniques/methods or show conceptual uniqueness and originality in the choice of a subject’.

I love it, because it makes me look at how information and data is (and could be) ‘mapped’ in different ways. I’m also a sucker for the pretty colours and patterns!

Bookshops

Anyone who buys from Amazon may be interested in Zoomii. It’s a virtual bookshop, where you can browse the shelves, before placing your order with Amazon. Looks great!

Gestural Technology

I’ve been doing some research lately on gestural technology. The company Perceptive Pixels have an amazing video that you should check out.