Artistic Data
One of the key takeaways from the O’Reilly conference was the noticeable shift in storytelling from traditional graphs and charts to a new form of fluid data visualization. Everyone from marketers, energy consultants and digital artists are aggregating data artistically to form and tell stories.
We are at a point where data is abundant. It’s everywhere, and easy to find. Statistics on anything are within a few clicks, and it’s cheap. This means that visualization and stories are what people will value. Visual stories are the second derivative of raw data.
People want to be told stories that engage their emotion. They want to see, graphically, how ideas change over time and what it means specifically for them.
Like Daniel Pink says in The Whole New Mind:
The ability to encapsulate, contextualize, and emotionalize has become vastly more important in the Conceptual Age. When so much routine knowledge work can be reduced to rules and farmed out to fast computers and smart L-Directed thinkers abroad, and the more elusive abilities embodied by stories become more valuable.
Flowing Data is a fantastic resource for data visualization. For instance, consider the financial environment of the past two years. Flowing Data recently aggregated various visual resources that explain the crisis as a story, rather than jumbled, jargon-filled paragraphs in the Wall Street Journal.
The pros are that the visual sources are entertaining, story-driven and informational. But, they do tend to miss the detailed analysis that the Wall Street Journal nails (occasionally). With that being said, data visualization is often perfect as a primer on any complex situation.
Aaron Koblin, who was a technical adviser on Radiohead’s House of Cards video that used sensors and lasers, has blended a new form of data visualization which leans more towards art than data. For instance, take a look at Aaron’s visualization of flight patterns across the United States. Aaron’s work has the ability to tell actionable stories, and they look beautiful as well. They also work as solid desktop backgrounds.
Data visualization is a cross over tool for literally any industry, with examples in weather monitoring and geographics. It’s an area I’m attempting to become increasingly familiar with, and my advice would be to take a look into it’s relevance for whatever you are doing
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