data visualization toys

October 13, 2008 11:45 PM

Spisi, spiral signal analysis, an infoviz toy by Bestiario. This application of theirs is also beautiful, heat C. A. "A simple cellular automata simulating heat dynamics". water, tissue and neurozapping are quite mesmerizing. Their birds flock makes me think of the starlings over Ot Moor.
posted by nickyskye (6 comments total)

Thanks for the links. All beautiful stuff, a great way to start my day.

In addition:

Aaron Koblin
Visual Complexity
Elastico

I had the pleasure of seeing all these guys at OFFF a few months ago (including José Luís de Vicente from Bestiario). Seriously mind blowing stuff.
posted by neblina_matinal at 1:45 AM on October 14, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

Amazing. Their front page is a bit vertigo-inducing, but the birds flock is particularly amazing.

Also, their el Bestiario del Bestiario (play with the sliders under 'escenario'!) is very sweet and cool.
posted by carbide at 4:41 AM on October 14, 2008

Beautiful, and thanks for the link to the starlings video.
posted by jquinby at 9:08 AM on October 14, 2008

Oh YAY, somebody looked at the starlings video. Thanks jquinby. That's one of my very favorites of all time.

And carbide, you're so right about the page induced vertigo. I almost got seasick there at first. It took me a bit to get the grab and hold the page navigating scroll and that pop up tag cloud, it felt initially like a page in a weightlessness chamber.

neblina_matinal, I'm starstruck you met "all these guys". They're really cyber heroes of mine in the data visualization department. The things they create! oooh, dreamy, amazing, playfully futuristic. They make me look at reality with new eyes, combining all kinds of ways of interpreting things in a kind of 3-D learning collage. Their immense joie de vivre comes through their work. Visual Complexity is one of my favorite sites ever.

Anyway, how cool you saw them and thanks for the great additional links.
posted by nickyskye at 10:26 AM on October 14, 2008

Cool-as-hell post as usual, nicky! It reminded me of this FPP featuring the Whitney Music Box, a really neat visual-math-music flash-toy. [warning: turn the volume down a bit before clicking, because the first note is jarring, but soon it turns beautiful; there are also many variations on that site to play with.]
posted by not_on_display at 12:47 PM on October 14, 2008

Oh yeah not_on_display, I remember that site. How cool the Whitney Music Box is! I love that site. (Pretty much everything tellurian posts I'm gaga about anyway.) Yes, It's that caliber of cyber playfulness, combining different ways of thinking, seeing, experiencing things together. Asking more of the senses and the mind somehow. I feel brain exercised on these new data visualization sites.
posted by nickyskye at 2:12 PM on October 14, 2008