Sketch of geolocated tweets, manipulating the mesh surface below
Joining the project is Liangjie Xia, a programmer and media artist based in New York and a recent graduate from ITP.
The current project focus is on a data landscape comprised of geocoded social updates, forming narrative pathways according to themes (we are evaluating Twitter, Flickr and Foursquare as data sources). As they occur, updates add points to a basemap of Taipei, cumulatively changing the elevation of the landscape. Updates, represented as nodes, are selectable, and articulate the landscape based on other thematically related updates. Finally, we are exploring toggling between two views: the surface mesh outlined above, and a view exchanging the mesh for narrative pathways, represented by hairlines connecting nodes related by topic and time.
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I am currently working with Jason Hsu, organizer of TEDx Taipei, and Edward Shen, recent MIT Media Lab graduate, on a data visualization project aiming to document urban memory in Taipei. The project began with a dialog Jason and I started at TEDActive in Palm Springs earlier this year. Jason recently wrote a blog article comparing my earlier work Pastiche with Jonathan Harris’ We Feel Fine. As the project progresses, I will continue to post updates here. Below is a proposal that captures my initial thoughts on issues the visualization might seek to address.
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It is almost cliché these days to state that the database is the form of expression of our age. Many have written on this topic, from computer scientists to media theorists, from philosophers to artists. They have examined networks as the means for connecting and accessing related objects from databases, as well as protocol in the structure of the database as undermining the assumed autonomy of the object. In the art world, the separation between content and expression no longer seems controversial—along with protocol, it has become a topic of critique. Yet, despite the growing familiarity with the database, it is perhaps given too much credit as a form of expression. The largest misconception seems to be that the database supplants an author-driven narrative. It is often seen as anti-narrative, anti-hierarchical, when in fact the database itself has inherent narrative qualities.
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With a personal working methodology primarily concerned with deconstruction, I am finding myself increasingly interested in narratives which may arise from reconstructing or reinterpreting semantic fragments.
My process typically begins with an existing semantic structure, which I deconstruct by classifying its syntactic and grammatical components. When presented outside their original context, these components convey new meaning through the way in which they are rearranged; new semantic patterns may emerge with each new logical arrangement. read the rest of this entry