a new set of generative visual themes that are directly created from, & visually accompany poems. each theme can be interactively explored online.

in the 2008 version, all words words in a poem based on their frequency in the text, which are placed on a line. the most frequent words are thus relatively large & placed on the left hand side. then, all words that appear in several poems are connected by a fluid red line. the width of the line is related to the length of the word in the regarding sequence.

the key visual of Poetry on the Road 2007 is based on the automatic retrieval of Flickr photos, as the it treats every word in a poem as a unique tag. each word is replaced by the most popular Flickr image. each photo is then cropped depending on the length & the frequency of the word it represents. the horizontal axis is defined by the length of the word, the vertical one by frequency.

[links: esono.com (2007) & esono.com (2008)]

see also visual poetry 2006 & visual poetry 2005.

a visualization tool that is able to generate a wireless (WiFi, 802.11) heatmap based on signal strength. an obvious application is to find the best physical place or area to work wirelessly with the highest signal strength. the tool allocates a 2D grid that overlaps the geographical sample area, working out the average signal strength based on nearby sample points.

[link: slowchop.com|thnkx Martin]

a Wiki-style global map of important debates that aims to visualize & deepen the understanding of the ways in which different debates are semantically interrelated. every debate map is provisional and open to iterative improvement by anyone who participates. over time, the debate maps mature into the definitive articulations of each debate. debates range from "Climate Change" over "Obama's Vice President" to "Can Computers Think?"

[link: debategraph.org]

see also narrating bits.

a beautiful "infographically" animated movie that illustrates a 1969 interview of John Lennon by a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan. armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, Jerry snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto & convinced him to do an interview about peace. using the original interview recording as the sole soundtrack, the movie titled "I Met the Walrus" suspends a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon's every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation.

the video was also nominated for an Oscar for "Best Animated Short" at the 2008 Academy Awards.

[link: imetthewalrus.com & youtube.com (trailer & interview with animators)|via realitysandwich.com]

an analogue, physical information sculpture that displays the daily average of CO2 concentration through a chemical reaction in which chalk particles are formed, which in turn changes the opacity of water encapsulated in plastic tubes. the "Statlab" installation samples air direct from a local area, so that the differences in water clarity creates an analogue graph in which the difference in the amount of chalk particles per tank is a global measure for the fluctuating CO2 concentration within one 1 week.

[link: bitlek.nl|thnkx Tjerk]

see also one trees electronic clones information environment.

an alternative way to represent time schedule tracking by stacking different lengths of Lego blocks as a way to convey different sequential time periods. stacking hourly rows on top of each other builds up the whole day, while color represents the different projects at hand. a whole week of time tracking is created by setting up a series of rainbow-colored days.

[link: jexp.de|thnkx Christopher]

see also: Fight Club movie narrative in Lego

multiple, superimposed logarithmic line graphs that show the "big picture" by aggregating the activity graphs from Google Trends for Websites. the domains searched within the last hour are rendered in brighter colors & gradually fade away. red lines indicate sites which are losing traffic. blue lines are gaining

[link: coverpop.com|via krazydad.com|thnkx Jim]

a detailed network representation giving an overview of the international products space, with different colors for each product class (e.g. petroleum, animal products, cereals, machinery, chemical, electronics), node size denoting the average income per-capita associated with that good & link color indicating a range in the proximity values

[link: chidalgo.com]

a typograpical movie about the powerful social & economic change brought about when girls have the opportunity to participate in their society.

[link: girleffect.org]

a set of network graphs based on data from followthemoney.org, which tracks the political donations in all 50 states that have the potential to play a pivotal role in shaping public policy.

[link: weshowthemoney.com & treepieblog.blogspot.com]

a new online service by google that allows users to compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories & time frames.

[link: google.com]

a time-based bubble chart of the number of past olympic medals won by countries. circles are mapped on a geographical world map or can be ranked by size. the circle size is determined by the number of medals each country won in past summer Olympic Games.

[link: nytimes.com]

a new BBC television series of which the first episode will be broadcast on Sunday 10 August. "Britain seen from above" shows the "unseen ballet of Britain" & the "great migrations across our landscape" "using satellite tracking & ground-breaking computer imaging".

the video trailer shows glimpses of maps with maritime shipping traffic, London taxi GPS traffic, British airspace traffic & UK's national telephone network activity.

[link: news.bbc.co.uk & youtube.com|thnkx Dave]

a visualization of the 2008 US movie box office revenues. each graph shows the trends in the top 25 movies at the box office for each weekend in a year. the color is based on the movie's debut week so that long-running movies gradually start to stand out from newer movies with different colors.

[link: xach.com & xach.com (explanations)|thnkx Till]

see also:
. ebb & flow of box office movies
. music listening history graph

an artistic visualization video that extracts & compares the keywords from 3 different websites. every time the application is run, structures, camera movements or the news-of-the-day change, making it in part unpredictable.

watch the video after the break.

[link: vimeo.com|via visualcomplexity.com]

see also lyrics & audio-responsive video.

a new online socially-driven data visualization service, in the same line of Many Eyes & Swivel & Track-n-Graph, which allows users to visualize & share information through the use of small widgets. Widgenie allows data to be acquired from spreadsheets & be visually shared online through a sequence of simple, online steps. the current visualization methods include the traditional line charts, bar charts, area charts, pie charts & text clouds.

[link: widgenie.com]

UPDATE: unfortunately, the widget seems to mess up the layout terribly...

a novel display interface that allows simultaneous collaborative actions by multiple people, while each user perceives an equally-valid view & no-one has a "master position" over the displayed information. projected objects can be passed around the sphere by different gestural actions.

applications include photo-browsing, geographical mapping, the navigation of live omnidirectional camera images & a pong game.

watch a demonstration video after the break.

[link: research.microsoft.com (more technical videos available)|via news.zdnet.co.uk & seattlepi.nwsource.com|via techcrunch.com]

see also:
. globe4d
. science on a sphere
. Jeff Han's multi-touch surface demonstration.

infographic video illustrating the price of vampire power, or wasted standby power. even when household appliances are turned off, most are still using some electricity. appliances are either in passive standby mode (the clock on the microwave is still ticking) or active standby mode (the VCR is off, but programmed to record something.

[link: goodmagazine.com (static infographic) & goodmagazine.com]

see also:
. enerjar
. saverclip
. ambient joule
. more power monitor
. power socket bar graph
. energy sculpture
. power-aware cord &
. wattson

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.

a coffee-table display case for samples of all existing stable elements. 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 "periodic" display walls exist as well.

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