A powerful simile - it’s like opening your shop door and saying to the person, “what do you want?” as opposed to opening the door and saying, “this is what we have what would you like?” What data visualisation enables is the reverse engineering of the search engine - showing the user everything and then offering them the tools to filter and deal with the complexity of the data. Data visualisation makes data more spatial, it becomes multi-dimensional. It allows us to discover relationships between data more easily by illustrating the patterns between data sets.

Some of the applications that have been suggested that will allow you to go deep into your data dynamically:

Manyeyes - looks for patterns in data supporting visual intelligence. Good for stats

Freebase gridworks - (java built) designed to work with excel, splits composite fields into multiple fields, allows you to load data, understand it, clean it up, reconcile it internally, and augment it

DBPedia - shows relationships between wikipedia entries + allows you to add your own data.

Dapper - a platform for understanding content from the top down, turning simple HTML websites into semantically aware applications with a few simple clicks of a mouse

Visualcomplexity - describes itself as a “unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks”.

Infosthetics - this site, created by Andrew Vande Moere of the University of Sydney, illustrates some interesting and creative visualisations of a broad selection of data.

Touchgraph - this free Java application allows you to explore the connections between related websites.

[ http://www.kentaroyamada.com/works_tampopo.php ]

Trying to launch all the seeds of a dandelion into the air with a single breath is a common experience most people can relate to, especially as a nostalgic activity recalled from childhood. Blowing dandelions is a simple action that occupies folklore in many cultures and is often a metaphor for ‘making a wish’.

Tampopo (Japanese for dandelion) is an interactive video installation where viewers are able to interact with the projector screen by blowing. It also creates echoed blowing sounds in the space, creating a mystical experience of blowing giant dandelions. In this work, the microphone acts not only as a metaphor between the real and virtual, but also creates a simple sculptural interface between the user and the screen. It acts like a conduit from one world to another while the work becomes a portal to the mystical domain of myth, memories and youthful emotions.

In a multi-screen setup, viewers can interact with other viewers by blowing each other’s dandelions, as each microphone input affects not only one but other dandelions through the use of multi-user networking system. This multi-user capability could be used over the internet, blowing each other’s dandelions from remote locations.

Kentaro would like to thank Takeshi Shimada from SNAP Japan, a collaborator on this project. Without his special talent, this project couldn’t be realized.

Exhibitions

Share Prize, Turin Italy March 2008
Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland New Zealand Nov 28 2007
RAMP Gallery Hamilton, New Zealand Oct 7 - 28 2005 [Link]
RM103 Gallery, Auckland New Zealand 29 Jun - 9 Jul 2005

Awards

Share Prize 2008 Finalist (Winner to be announced March 2008) [Link]
2005 TUANZ Interactive Awards Experimental Category Winner

Articles

Contemporary Art of Science and Technology, Page 407, ISBN:978-7-03-020415-8
Waikato Times Oct 2005