What we might have forgotten...

LINK TO VIDEO

For my data art assignment I made a video that tells the story of the 10 years of the US war in the Middle East through Call of Duty. I found that FPS (First Person Shooters) such as COD: Modern Warfare depicts war and glorifies in a way the United States. So I began asking myself if what we see in these games is a portrayal of what is really happening. Or in a way how we can relate the fiction presented by the game to reality.

First of all, I decided the title of my video would be COD: Operation Enduring Freedom, since it is the name given to the US military operation that is working to eliminate al-qaeda in the middle east which I found really interesting and ironic.

The video is structured in a video game pattern; it begins with a title screen and goes into select game options.  It begins with a multiplayer battle, and then it goes into a special mission that contains the war in Iraq from the beginning to actuality, which is divided into five sections of years (2003,05,07,09 and 13). Each section contains different footage from a mission campaign taken from Modern Warfare and the audio taken from news broadcasted during those years. Through the video one can see the transition of the war without losing its game-like structure since you can see the player die or make a pause during the game, as well as level up in ranks. 

I believe that many interpretations can be drawn, but my intention is to make the user reflect on how we might have forgotten of the war in Iraq to the point that games such as COD: Modern Warfare are depict similar scenes. Also, the way in which the identity of Middle East countries and their people is lost since the name of the locations for each map are shown as ‘UNNAMED’.

Finally I want to give the user a feeling of the juxtaposition of reality vs virtual world, how we could relate the events that are happening on the game to what is really going on out there.

CITATIONS

All footage was taken from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

Audio
"STATE OF UNIONS ADDRESS". Accessed March 25,2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLffiSZKQpM

"BUSH PRESS CONFERENCE". Accessed March 25,2013.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIEvjbABWhk

"10 years back." Accessed March 25,2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_nvlIZETeE

"how will war on terror end?" .Accessed March 25,2013.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkx7yX39nDA

"Obama in Afghanistan, Defeat of Taliban Al-Qaeda & War Strategy." Accessed March 25,2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4oBF9wmVIQ

"AMERICAN SOLDIERS." Accessed March 25,2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w83T_5GHJc8

"IRAQUI CHILDREN." Accessed March 25,2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OLPWlMmV7s

"UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA." Accessed March 25,2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Rhf8Y9TKP0

"10th IRAQ INVASION ANNIVERSARY." Accessed March 25,2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8pjgfbrWAE

"GRANT COLLINS - VETERAN AGAINST WAR." Accessed March 25,2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFUf1adtcEc

"Darrel Anderson - Exposing the US war policy in Iraq." Accessed March 25,2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7cdgIqimd0

"WAR ON TERROR - OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM." Accessed March 25,2013.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Terror#Operation_Enduring_Freedom

"RANK UP SOUND MODERN WARFARE 2." Accessed March 25,2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Dntg9Xu-Lk

"VICTORY SONG." Accessed March 25,2013.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL5dAvku1iY 

Data vs Information - A battle of MEANING!

Mitchell Whitelaw talks about how some data artist employ the use of data, and their ideas behind the meaning of data.

Whitelaw present us with different artist that employ data artist in different ways, from the use of data to convey information to the use of data to produce an artwork without the importance of the information that the data might contain, which I believe allows us to take data to above and beyond.

I believe the reason in which sometimes this might seem problematic is because we believe that data and information are pretty similar when, as Whitelaw’s argues, they are slightly different. Then the meaning of data, or the information that we get from the data can be somehow molded by data artists.

Two interesting examples are Dragulescu’s  and Jevbratt’s pieces. They use their data to convey a different message or meaning from it. Dragulescu’s takes spam from the forgotten email graveyard and transform it into great structural pieces! Even when the context of spam email is presented different one can also observe the 'violent' presence of spam in the pieces.

On the other hand Jevbratt does not seem the information in data to be really important and she lets the audience use their own interpretation to construct a meaning from this data set which relates to reality.

It is intriguing the ways in which data can be transformed from a collection to a piece of art that can either give us some meaningful information about the data used or none at all. At the same time, the uses of data agency seems to focus more in the data itself rather than information. I think in this way we are able to explore and focus more on the data to discover various meanings.

Progression Through my Life

Hello there!

I will talk about one of the data visualizations presented in class, and that I thought I familiarized myself with.  Nicolas Ferrante's Progression Through Lives made me think about how my games' selections have changed over the last couple of years.

The first thing I really liked was how you represent the data, I think it was pretty smart since we tend to just throw the game boxes everywhere and the random feature really gave it that feeling. I felt like the colors really represent each genre, and the way that the size of each block was determined by the hours played was a good idea and it makes you think about how much time you have given to that specific game over the years.

What I found very interesting was the four different types of players you talked about. The way that one can be a killer, or an explorer really makes you think about how you play your games or the reasons why you play them. It makes the data visualization more effective, since we do not only see how your game selections have changed but also how you have changed for the last couple of years!

I thought it would be a good idea to take the quiz, and I was a bit curious as what type of game I am and here are the results:


It seems like from now on people should call me Diego since I like to go around the map rather than get every single item, get to know everyone or rather massacre them!

In overall, I believe you did a great job! The interactive part of your visualization was really good and I think it would get anyone to explore your visualization. One thing maybe you could try to change would be the direction of the piles, since they look like they are rather falling than pilling up.

Data visualizations are not just "pretty" data!

For this week we had to read Warren Sack's paper on the Aesthetics of Information Visualization. It looks like there are many questions about data visualizations, but perhaps a wrong idea about them would be that their job is to make data look “prettier,” as well easier to understand. There are other concepts like administration, body and language that Sack mentions in his book and help answer the question of Why do we make visualizations?

There are many aspects of conceptual art that are taken into data visualization. Another aspect one should pay attention when looking at a visualization is the administration of it. Whether it is democratic or bureaucratic, which would give a better picture of what the piece is aiming at.

“The art of governance,” or body of a visualization, is a point that I consider one should take in count since it is where exchanges of concepts or ideas between artist (and other people) are pictured.  Then, one should “look at the bodies, that are engaged and how these bodies are articulated, challenged, and represented by the visualizations,” as Sack mentions in his article.

PDPal does a great job on representing the way in which people are linked.

The idea behind PDPal represents the “social network” that sacks mentions, and I believe it works well to represent an art of network since people are able to share their artworks with others and link them together.

In the end, the “user friendly-ness” or "pretty-ness" of a visualization shouldn't be what to look for all the time. Its administration, body and network might give us an understanding of the reason it was made, which could lead to the appreciation of how the people can be joined inside  one big art network, and how each one of them (the bodies) take an important part to create the actual piece!

Sweet Pollution!

Sweet Pollution Processing Sketch

When we see candy we only think about their sweet flavors they bring to our mouth, and maybe not imagine that something so small might also be behind the cases of lung diseases, asthma or infections. The data base I picked gave me access to information of the uses of three different chemicals (NOx, VOCs and Particulate matter) at confectioneries in Toronto. I was very surprised of the amount of chemicals that are used, and released to the air by these, and I didn't focus directly on the companies but on the candies they produce.

Some representations can be "shared" when the same amount of chemicals is the same in different uses! 

I believe the idea of candy and chemicals gives an element of contradiction to the work, and a happy color scheme would make it more effective since candy are seen as harmless and innocent. At the same time, I was told about this board game called “Candy Land,” which inspired me on the layout of the each section in the info-graphic  There are also characters that might look innocent at first, but when you come near them they     take their real form.

Chemicals and uses are represented with different colors

Another element that I aimed for was originality. Instead of spreading candy around the graphics, I liked the idea of having the candy being the actual graphic so it would not be complicated to understand which types of candies are behind the spread of these chemicals into the air, and which of these are used in their production. The chemicals and their uses are distinguished with colors  in this way it would be easier to differentiate one chemical or use from the others.

Click and hold on this character will display info about the sketch

At last but not least I added a bit of interactivity, which I thought it would add more fun into the work. The viewer would be intrigued to know more about each chemical by clicking on some of the characters around the sketch. 
In overall I had a lot of fun making every section, and adding different details like in “Candy Land.” If you have a chance to play it then you will notice that there is delicious candy everywhere!

CITATIONS:

All information about each chemical was found in the database used:

Toronto Open. "Chemical Tracking (Chem Track)", last modified June 30,2011. Accessed January 19,2013, http://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/open_data/open_data_item_details?vgnextoid=9fb5c3dccb8c8310VgnVCM1000003dd60f89RCRD&vgnextchannel=6e886aa8cc819210VgnVCM10000067d60f89RCRD

Wikipedia."Candy Land." Accessed February 5th, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candy_Land

Images:

Cupcake Connection. "Smarties png". Accessed February 10,2013. http://www.cupcakeconnexion.co.za/services.cfm

New Business Start-ups. "Smarties Cartoon." http://www.dna-accountants.co.uk/new-business-start-up.cfm

Tu Mundo PNG. "Lollipops." Accessed February 10,2013. http://tumundopnggratis.blogspot.ca/2012/08/paletas-png.html

Toons 4biz. "Cartoon Chocolate." Accessed February 11,2013. http://www.toons4biz.com/Cartoon-Chocolate-Bar-Graphic-Clip-Art-s/252.htm

Xochi. Info. "Jelly-Flower." Accessed February 11,2013. http://xochi.info/art/svg/flowers/jelly-flower-xochi-info-flowers-svg-youtube-facebook-linkedin-twitter-google-and-pinterest/

Images Wikia. "Hombre Gelatina." Accessed February 11,2013. http://images.wikia.com/horadeaventura/es/images/0/0c/Hombre_gelatina.png 

Life Fitness For Seniors. "Jello." Accessed February 11,2013. http://www.lifefitnessforseniors.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/rugby471_Tango_Style_Red_Jelly1.png 

Nathalie Miebach - Art made of Storms!

PRESENTATION PDF FORMAT

Sources

“Nathalie Miebach Bio,” accessed January 28, 2013, http://www.ted.com/profiles/939765

“Weather Scores,” accessed January 27, 2013, http://www.nathaliemiebach.com/weatherscores.html

“Art made of storms,” TED, accessed January 27, 2013, http://www.ted.com/talks/nathalie_miebach.html

"Betascape 2012," youtube, posted on October 17, 2012, accessed January 29, 2013,  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWJ6IW82FUw

Information about partners in sculpture was found in the conference at Betascape 2012 (previous citation).

ALL pictures used from her works were taken from her website www.nathaliemiebach.com

Sketch, sketch, sketch!!

So next week its the presentation of our data visualization, and in this blog I am posting the sketches of the ideas I have got about the design, colors and fonts that I will be using for it.

Before we get to the pretty colors, here is a simple data graph that I used using a bit of the information from my data set. In the end I decided to shorten the number of variables, and I will be going directly to the chemical pollution made by candy companies. YES! candy is dangerous even when you don't eat it, which is a bit sad.

Just by looking at the graph we can tell that there is three companies that release an alarming quantity of chemicals into the air. hmm, I wonder what they would use it for! Of course I will be doing a bit of research to see how these chemicals are used in these factories!

These are the colors that I have thought of using at the moment. I will be using the areas of circles for the representation of the quantity of chemicals used by the companies, which are processed, manufactured, used by other means and released to AIR! At the same time I will have a bit of information of each chemical (the clouds of smoke), and a map which will show the locations of each company. 

I should also mention that by clicking on the location of the company the viewer will be able to look at the information of the company, the products they make, and on the left side the chemical information! 

So far this is my idea of the visualization of my data, although I have to mention that I have other plan in terms of the visualization of the company's chemical info which might take the form of a factory. I think we will see how it turns out in the end!