The last talk I attended was hosted by Peter Kirn and Joy Mountford entitled Data As Art. This talk would prove to be the most inspirational talk out of my time at SXSWi.
I'm a big fan of Edward Tufte and simplifying data through graphics and visual art. I'm also really into generative art and using Maths to create visual graphics. This talk showcased some of the best in the field.
On a simple level representing data visually not only makes something which is impossible to understand into something very easy to understand. See this video clip to view the flight paths of aircraft over the United States over a 24 hour period. Millions of numbers through visual interpretation becomes easy to realise and understand. (Lets put it this way, I was shitting my flight home after seeing this!!)
To see some of the videos from the talk, click the image above or here.
After Joy demonstrated several experiments that she had worked on at the Yahoo Research Labs, Peter took over and gave a basic intro to Processing — a program used by many to visualise data.
He also demonstrated creating audio with Processing with a small application which converted his spam emails into music. He joked how laptop musicians are often referred to as 'checking their emails' whilst performing live. So he decided to make music whilst checking his emails. Nice.
Perhaps the best way to further explain what this whole scene is about is to check out some of the key people in the field right now. These are...
It's really hard to put into words what I experienced during this talk but I came away completely inspired. So much so, that I am considering a learning Processing and setting up a website (with
Expression Engine) to document my experiences and experiments. I've dabbled with
Max/MSP before but Processing results seem to be more visual and is the syntax seems similar to Actionscript but way more powerful. Apparently the community is very supportive and there are some excellent forums helping newcomers like me to learn the ropes.
Definitely the most inspiring talk of SXSWi.