information aesthetics

Words & Votes: The Changing Congressional Opinions on Gun Violence

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May 182013

The political visualization Words & Votes [sandyhookpromise.org], developed by digital agency R/GA for non-profit organization Sandy Hook Promise, provides a comprehensive look into the opinions of congressional representatives on the issue of gun violence.

More specifically, the visualization tracks each member of congress as being "neutral", on the side of "Gun Safety," or on the side of "Gun Rights". It then maps the evolution of these opinions over time on a vertical timeline.

These individual opinions have been based on two separate types of information: the analysis of the tweets sent by members of Congress and their voting record on Capitol Hill on laws and bills that relate to gun violence.

Individual members of congress can be explored in terms of being influential or vocal, or filtered by address, zip code or home town.

Mapping the Pavement Quality of Streets in L.A.

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May 102013

L.A. Street QualGrades [latimes.com], developed by the Los Angeles Times Data Desk, maps the pavement quality rating for each of the 68,000 street segments in L.A., the largest municipal system in the US with about 6,500 miles of paved roadway streets.

Using a state-of-the-art van equipped with cameras and lasers, the Bureau of Street Services graded each single street segment of L.A.'s vast street network from from A (dark green) to F (dark pink). The grades were based on a 100-point scale called the "pavement condition index".

The accompanying news article can be found here. Via Flowing Data.

YouTube Trends Map: Explore the Most Popular Videos by Location

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May 102013

The YouTube Trends Map [youtube.com] is a visualization of the most shared and viewed videos in various regions across the United States over the last 12 to 24 hours. It accompanies the more analytical Trends Dashboard to provide a full overview of the the rising videos and trends on YouTube in terms of actual views or shares, filtered by geographical location, gender or age of the viewers.

The demographic information of viewers is solely based on the information reported by registered, logged-in users in their YouTube account profiles. Next to the geographical map, the Trends Map also include a series of horizontal bar graphs, each representing a graphical summary of the top videos for a different demographic. Within each bar, a video is represented by a colorful segment, the colors are drawn from the video's thumbnail. The width of a video's segment reflects the number of regions on the map where the video is #1.

Bolides: Explore the Eye-Witnessed Meteorites that Collided with Earth

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May 042013

Bolides - Visualizing Meteorites [bolid.es] by data visualization designer Carlo Zapponi visualizes all historical occurrences of meteorites that collided with the Earth and were eye-witnessed when falling and hitting the ground.

The visualizes is comprised of a linear timeline of which the top denotes the number of meteorites spottings per year, and the bottom shows their mass, estimated in kilograms. The dataset includes 34,513 recordings of found and fell meteorites that have not been classified as doubtful or discredited. A meteorite is classified as 'fell' if it has been observed by people or automated devices during its fall.

Here is Today: Comparing One Day to One Eon

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Apr 302013

Here is Today [hereistoday.com] by graphic designer Luke Twyman is a simple yet elegant timeline rendition that puts into context the different scales of time.

Ranging from one day to one eon, and framing the time periods different kinds of species emerged on Earth, the timeline ribbon acts like a dynamic stacked bar chart that enables easy comparison.

Connected China: Explaining the Players and Networks within China

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Apr 262013

The beautifully crafted app Connected China [reuters.com], designed by Fathom Information Design, tracks and visualizes the people, institutions and relationships that form China's elite power structure.

The application was specifically designed for the iPad and is based on data, text, photos and videos from the international news agency Reuters.

Three visualizations stand out: "Social Power", which represents the power base of Xi Jinping through family connections; "Institutional Power", which reflects the power of the Politburo Standing Committee on every level of the government; and finally, "Career Comparison", which tracks the career paths of the seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee.

More information about the this app is available here.

Chesapeake Bay Grasses: Tracking Underwater Vegetation over Time

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Apr 262013

Chesapeake Bay Grasses [chesapeakebay.net], designed by Stamen Design is an interactive map that tracks a quite exotic subject: the changes of the underwater grasses at Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the United States.

Accordingly, the map reveals how the fluctuations in water temperature, salinity and turbidity correlate to grass abundance, as dominant species ebb and flow and grass beds shrink and expand over a period of 30 years.

More information about this project is also available here.

TweetMap ALPHA: Querying a Massive Amount of Tweets on a Map

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Apr 242013

The impressive TweetMap ALPHA [harvard.edu], developed by Harvard University's Center for Geographic Analysis, is based on a dataset of about 95 million tweets, which can be dynamically queried by time, by location or by keyword.

Tweetmap makes use of so-called special Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) to parallelize the hard-to-compute job such as the querying and rendering of the very large dataset on-the-fly. As such, the online map shows individual tweets as unique dots, but also aggregates them as a heatmap. In addition, the a series of maps can be generated and explored by time, ranging from days to mere seconds.

The Largest Web Page on the Internet: 7 Billion People on One Page

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Apr 232013

7 Billion World [7billionworld.com] displays 7 billion people together on a single webpage.

Developed by Worldometers - which themselves were originally posted in the good year of 2005 -, the web page itself is generated through some small programming code, yet is claimed to be 1 mile (1.6km) high and 800 feet (250m) wide, which is both horizontally and vertically scrollable.

Reminds me of World Population One.

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