Launching
Data Visualisation
Data is an integral part of living. This project aims to make sense of ‘big data’, like global statistics, and generate outcomes visualising these numerical sets. How can we see, hear, experience and form meaning from numbers?
Through re-encoding data and exploring different graphing types I aim to create meaningful, interpretative realisations of multi-dimensional information.
The CSV data format will be my primary input into the Processing programme, this is to extend my understanding of how creative realisations of the most basic sheets can form.
We had 2 main workshops on this project, each sketch all including a basic csv file.
Using the Table() function I learned that you can directly communicate through Processing with rows and columns of data. By writing lines like get.Row you could ask the computer to pay attention to specific values.
You can make grids or linear timelines with your values and even order them how you would like e.g small to large.
You can communicate if the data within your rows are int or String. Then you can display these values either by calling on text() or by assigning your int value to say an ellipse().
Research
I really enjoyed this example on the overview page by Tyler Vigen. Spurious Correlations is a project created to examine data correlations in a whimsical way. The charts on his site aren't created to, in his words, "imply causation nor are they meant to create a distrust for research or correlative data". They are instead are non related data sets that when paired together may spark a viewers interests in numerical research.
The site Flowing Data was created by Nathan Yau, a statistical PHD student. Across a huge variety of topics, you can search his library of infographics. The one pictured to my left is 'How popular is your job in the US?', you type your job title into the search bar at the top then different sized squares will cover the states depending on how many people in that location have your job.
"I want as many people as possible to understand data, and I think visualisation — from statistical charts to infographics to data art — is the best way to get there."
-Nathan Yau
Nicholas Felton is the creator of this site, his work focuses on "translating quotidian data into meaningful objects and experiences". Each word on the homepage are hyperlinks that will take you to each of his projects.
'Editorial' was one of my favourites to look through as it focussed mainly on infographics for print which was a bit of a juxtaposition to the rest of the infographics I was researching. His collage technique is visually rich.
'Pluralsight Skill Sets' by designer Brendan Dawes was commissioned by PluralSight Live 2018, was created to visualise over 1.3 million assessment scores to create both an overview of all the skills people can learn on Pluralsight as well as creating clusters of roles such as Server Administrator or Web Developer.
His visual clusters are what drew me to this work, completely abstract to subject matter but visually enticing.
Infographics seem to be what industry experts are pushing for, seen as a more technological adventurous solution to a printed poster, Data Visualisation really comes into play here.
To visually make data interesting is the task of both traditional and new media, but infographics with technological features can allow you to consider how physical interactions can be a part of the information relaying process.
'Next Generation Scientific Poster' project by The Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel, takes scientific data visualisation into the physical realm by constructing an interactive interface for audiences. As a result, they founded The Science Communication Lab as a spin-off from the academy so they could offer this expertise to researchers in the scientific community all over the world.
I think this interactive poster would be a good place for me to start if I wanted to work on this project for Open Share. Right now I think it's important for me to wrap my head around the basic code needed to import data and manipulate visual aspects in Processing. If I wanted to physically visualise my outcomes from this project I think an interactive screen or Arduino system would be a possibility.
To visualise my csv files I'm going to make a series of posters that I can physically realise at a later date.
Below are two artists that i'm following closely just now and will greatly influence my design choices.
David Shrigley
Jerry-Lee Bosmans
Shrigley, born 17 September 1968, is a British visual designer. He worked and lived in Glasgow for 27 years and worked on projects like The Commonwealth Games.
I like his bold prints, the visuals are focussed around basic shape and colour making them look quite childlike yet his confident paint strokes give a charming quality to the work.
Bosmans is a visual designer and artist based in Nijmegen in the Netherlands but he is currently still studying.
He specialises in contemporary graphics, often characterised by vibrant colour palettes and playful compositions.
I enjoy his clean vibrant layout and his use of text.
Sketchbook
I started with workshop 1 to get a sense of where to start. Unfortunately this project for me will consist of zoom meetings and working from home since I sadly tested positive for COVID. Working remotely has limited me slightly and I feel I could do more with my code in the next part of this project when i'm fighting fit and able to attend tutorials.
Data
The government website and office for national statistics were great places for me to find csv files and they were already in csv format free to download.
Some of them I did have to create my own tables for in excel since the information was far too detailed.
Sketching
These are my initial sketches after conducting my research and visiting the sites on the overview page. Originally to follow along with workshop 1 I found some csv data sheets from the .GOV website. I wanted quite a large file so I could use sets of historical dates as points to further visualise, such as the difference in divorce rates from 1970 to 2020. I used the amount of marriages from 1850-2020 and same sex marriages from 2014-2020 as well as divorces from both from 2000-2020. I did manage to use this data to do a couple of Processing sketches but I was feeling that the data itself probably wasn't the route I wanted to go down since I'm not much of a marriage person and divorce I was struggling to think of ways to make visually appealing.
I changed my mind but stuck with the .GOV site since the data was reliable and there were vast topics. I found some interesting sets on the global food and drink market, specifically fresh produce market rates. The data sets for price per kilo dated all the way back to the 70's for each week. I could find these csv files for the likes of meat, fish and fruit like bananas and apples.
I used illustrator to make vectors so when I was resizing in Processing nothing would pixelate. I kept having this problem when I was importing .obj files and resizing.
Process
To start the process of making the final output, I went back to my sketch that had individual spread designs. By using data csv files from the UK Government website pertaining to global wholesale prices for food and drink, I aim to create a collection of interactive data posters that could be used to highlight price increase post-brexit or to highlight Fairtrade stock.
I hope to make some data posters interactive so mouse hovers will display information regarding price, location, type or dates. My key data set I will be using is consists of the price per kilo, origin dependant, of wholesale bananas sold to UK markets.
I will use creative code to reinvent how both historical and current food and drink prices are displayed.
Interactive Data PDF
Spread 1
Intro to banana prices. Could do the grid layout, mouse hovers with light up colour coded lerp rect within the grid.
Could use the Columbia csv file.
Spread 2
International banana export visible through geo map and cross hair scanner. I could use the UK global export csv file.
Spread 3
Popularity of banana type shown by size of .obj file. Size of banana = popularity. Could use the global sales gov csv file.
Spread 4
2022 week by week banana price shown in ellipse size grid. Gov site has UK import csv file for every week.
I made a basic version of some of the .gov csv files since they either didn't include what I needed like the latitude/longitude or they had irrelevant data.
This is what the simple table looked like when I finished.
Spread 5
Obj rotating banana with yearly prices from global csv price file.
Spread 6
Ellipse grid showing number of imports.
I wanted to have some little animations and videos showing some of the data I had found. I used some 3D programmes like Dimension and Blender to make some models.
The materials weren't the same on import so sometimes it was better to just export as a png file so you could keep the high render but not keep 3D qualities.
This was my GIF code that I worked on. I exported this into after effects to edit some more.
I animated by using the FrameCount and to add to this I was going to add like a text timer that would display my text for a set 15 second limit.
This was after workshop 2 when we worked on creating our own class. My plan was to use the dot class and the hover interaction to display the data but have these form into the shape of a banana. I thought I could do this with a .obj file but that proved tricky so I asked for some help in a tutorial.
I was really interested in the geo map code examples and played about with this example a lot using a host of csv files. This particular file showed me all the places that had exported bananas in 2022 so far when you hovered over the point.
This was the final export of the class code. Paul came up with this example and I added some features from the workshop as well as loading in some more rows and different data files. In the end you had a wobbly banana that when you hovered over the points it showed you the price of a kilo of bananas on a weekly basis in 2022 depending on the country which they were imported from.
Final Export
