Cool spatial visualizations

September 17, 2005 6:22 PM

Looking for cool, interesting, representations of spatial data.

Striking and innovative visualizations of spatially located datasets. Doesn't need to be to scale or even 'realistic' (i.e.: it could show topographical or conceptual relationships), but the information should have some sort of relationship with its position in space. Much of the stuff on infosthetics would fit the bill, as would some of our own Andrew Cooke's work.
Maps, schematics, plans, real-time graphics, anything which shows real data in real space in an unreal way is welcome. If it relates to people in space or how they use space, even better.

posted by signal to Media & Arts (7 answers total)

Ben Fry's work immediately springs to mind.
posted by Gyan at 6:52 PM on September 17, 2005

From there, the ACG group at MIT is an obvious next step.
posted by Gyan at 6:57 PM on September 17, 2005

Well, there is concept net, another MIT project. Also the classic example music plasma, built with Topic maps.
posted by |n$eCur3 at 7:41 PM on September 17, 2005

HyperLIC.

These visualizations make me shiver with pleasure.
posted by ikkyu2 at 9:45 PM on September 17, 2005

Response by poster: Just to be clear, I'm not looking for spatialized representations of non-spatial datasets (like the music plasma example), but rather representations of information which is spatial to begin with.
posted by signal at 10:35 PM on September 17, 2005

At the moment, I can suggest projections of non-Euclidean surfaces on Euclidean surfaces, like the Poincare disc. My first link has projects representing the genome (which exists in space).
posted by Gyan at 1:38 AM on September 18, 2005

Check out the work of Edward Tufte. He is probably the most knowledgeable person on the structuring of information into visual representations. He offers many seminars around the country as well. His books are an incredible wealth of info on the topic.
posted by JJ86 at 3:16 AM on September 18, 2005