#visualising data

Mood Board project

Well now this took longer than expected (but I am happy I did it!!) - hope on over to take a look, please, and pardon my random musings.

https://github.com/yinglinglow/dataprojects

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on an entirely separate note (and this is not even python related!) - check this out: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140701-the-superorganism-engulfing-earth

I splatter paint on little plastic balls,

I stab bulb-headed pins in a hemisphere of styrofoam

I stick rods into a map and noose them with colored strings

Why do humans do useless things? Why can we obsess with such things?

It’s true that many world-changing discoveries have been made through observations in strange places and circumstances; electromagnetism, penicillin, Coca Cola. But this is different, here I am pursuing something with no clear aim, only following the narratives that unfold within the data. That is a strange thing. We brush our teeth to clean our teeth. We eat breakfast to fill our stomachs. We work 9 to 5 to make ends meet.  So why is this different? Because of God?

The thing that humanity has done since our beginning. Discovering the potential of God through the stories and traditions within the many religions of the many peoples that have walked on the face of the earth. We postulated the existence of an all powerful entity and felt a compelling need to engage with it, to let it shape our lives. Perhaps this is the key, innate, human quality that has allowed us to advance from hunting and gathering, to farming, to industrializing, to networking; feeling value within and passion for, something immense and potent and engaging in it religiously. Fearing that we will never fully realize its potential; the fear of God.

Visualising data through art. What new perspective could unravel from this underdog player within the age of (mis)information? What black swans could appear? When?

Perhaps there will never be any. We don’t know. We don’t need to know. Splatter, stab, stick, tinker, iterate, follow. We do it with the fear of God.

Yirat adonai - fear of the Lord (hebrew saying)

This is part of a series of posts about the 'little of visualisation design', respecting the small decisions that make a big difference towards the good and bad of this discipline. In each post I'm going to focus on just one small matter - a singular good or bad design choice - as demonstrated by a sample project.

The post The little of visualisation design: Part 5 appeared first on Visualising Data.