Archive: Art
August 25, 2010, 9:32 am
Egg Cracking Technique
by Henry Woodbury
A friend linked me to the delightful They Draw and Cook web site (thanks Katy!). Here you have simple recipes rendered by artists and illustrators. Many are no more than decorated recipe cards, but some clamber over the illustration fence into visual explanation territory. An example is Alex Savakis’s egg cracking technique:
In this one, the text is superfluous.
June 4, 2010, 10:21 am
Visual Explanation, 17th Century Version
by Henry Woodbury
Flora’s mallewagen, Allegory of the Tulip Mania, by Hendrik Gerritsz Pot:
The goddess of flowers is riding along with three drinking and money weighing men and two women on a car. Weavers from Haarlem have thrown away their equipment and are following the car. The destiny of the car is shown in the background: it will disappear in the sea.
(hat tip: Walter Russell Mead)
May 25, 2010, 11:38 am
Saint Ginés Wins MUSE Award
by Henry Woodbury
Dynamic Diagrams and the J. Paul Getty Museum have won a 2010 Silver MUSE award for the Getty-produced video Making a Spanish Polychrome Sculpture. Dynamic Diagrams created the 3D animation that opens the video and shows how the XVII century sculpture was assembled. The Getty integrated this animation with live action footage that shows carving and surface treatment techniques. The effectiveness of this combination was noted by many of the judges:
This is a fine example of technology effectively used to clearly demonstrate an intricate artistic process. It’s the combination of the digital imagery with the live footage of an artist that makes this video exciting and fascinating for all kinds of audiences
The MUSE awards are presented annually by the American Association of Museums’ Media and Technology committee. They recognize “institutions or independent producers which use digital media to enhance the museum experience and engage new audiences.” We are proud to work with The Getty on projects of such scope and distinction.
May 19, 2010, 12:52 pm
Explore the Display Cabinet
by Henry Woodbury
One of the masterworks in The Getty Museum’s newly opened European sculpture and decorative arts galleries is the Augsburg Display Cabinet, a lavishly decorated 17th century cabinet that once would have stored a collector’s curios and precious objects.
The cabinet features many panels and doors beyond those opened for display. To give visitors a look inside the cabinet and help them understand the details of its decoration and construction, The Getty asked Dynamic Diagrams to create an interactive 3D model of the artifact.
Working closely with Getty curators and media professionals, we used a comprehensive set of photographs to build the model and apply surface details. We then coded our application to import text and zoomable images from an external source, allowing Getty staff full control over the descriptions and detail views that accompany the model.
Our application is presented in the gallery on a touchscreen display, as seen at right in this photo from the Daily News of Los Angeles.
February 26, 2010, 3:34 pm
Man as Industrial Palace Animation
by Lisa Agustin
We sometimes use “little people” to depict complex processes, with multiple actors participating in a real-life process (e.g., online collaboration or editorial workflow). But little people can also be used to illustrate processes as they might be imagined. Physician and science writer Fritz Kahn (1888-1968) often used the man-as-machine analogy to show functions and features of the human body. One of Kahn’s most famous works is the “Man as Industrial Palace” poster from 1927. Designer Henning Lederer brings the poster to life with this clever animation that illustrates several systems of the human body, including respiratory, circulatory, digestive, and nervous.
Read more about Lederer’s project: http://www.industriepalast.com/
[via Flowing Data]
December 10, 2009, 12:47 pm
Tim Burton: “Drawing Helps My Mental Process”
by Lisa Agustin
While director Tim Burton is perhaps best known for fantastical movies like Edward Scissorhands and his upcoming version of Alice in Wonderland, his creative output is actually quite broad, and includes paintings, photography, sculpture, and writing. Burton’s body of work is the focus of a new exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art. Sketchbooks and drawings figure prominently in the show, and represent not a final product as much as a way to explore and share ideas. Says Burton:
[Drawing] has always been an important part of my life….I haven’t really shown any of this stuff. I never considered it art or artwork, mainly because it was not meant to be seen, really. It was all sort of the process I was doing when I was thinking of ideas or helping my own mental process. All these kinds of things, whether photographs, or little writings, or sketches, for me, are THE most important part of any project. I mean, because once I’m doing it, like when I have to communicate with people, it’s not easy for me. So the important work has to be done in these little private projects.
The exhibition runs through April 26, 2010.
November 9, 2009, 11:20 am
Abstract Berlin
by Henry Woodbury
Christopher Niemann has combined history and personal narrative to tell the story of the Berlin Wall, in words and stunningly simple images:
Niemann’s iconic images reference specific events and larger ideas. One image shows an East German border guard hurdling barbed wire to escape into the West. Other images remind me of M.C. Escher’s tessellated patterns, reduced to elemental form. Niemann’s underlying theme is the transformation of a city, history as augury and echo.
November 6, 2009, 2:54 pm
Cellphone as Paintbrush
by Lisa Agustin
Cell Tango is an evolving digital installation that dynamically organizes images transmitted by cellphone based on cellphones’ area codes, carriers, time and date of transmission, and participants’ contributed categories and descriptive tags. Created by artists George Legrady and Angus Forbes, the exhibit is not so much an artist’s vision as it is an audience vision–one that suggests that everyday images taken with your cellphone camera could, in fact, mean something more. Legrady suggests:
Will cellphone technology transform how we create/use images produced “on the fly”? In what ways do online visual databanks such as Flickr recontextualize the images we create and share? Can such online images be used creatively as components in artistic works that explore the construction of visual narratives through the juxtaposition of sequenced images? What may be relevant implementation of voice annotation to add metadata to images?
Cell Tango will be on display at Wellesley College in Wellesley, MA, through December 13.
See also:
November 6, 2009, 10:35 am
The Final Frontier
by Henry Woodbury
Sean McNaughton of National Geographic and Samuel Velasco of 5W Infographics have produced a majestic map of the nearly 200 lunar, solar, and interplanetary space missions over the past 50 years.
At the National Geographic, the map is presented in a “Zoomify” Flash object.
Better is the full size image placed by Adam Crowe on Flickr.
What I really need is a wall-sized print.
October 23, 2009, 3:45 pm
The Mummy Animation Joins the Mummy
by Henry Woodbury
At the J. Paul Getty Museum’s Getty Villa Malibu, our 3D animation of the of Mummy of Herakleides is now installed in the gallery:
It’s a perfect day for a trip to Malibu.
October 16, 2009, 10:10 am
Infographics for Web Workers
by Lisa Agustin
Web Design Ledger offers a collection of infographics of special interest to web workers, including process flows, data driven visualizations, and musings (like xkcd.com’s Map of Online Communities, above). Enjoy.
August 26, 2009, 1:29 pm
Mummy of Herakleides
by Henry Woodbury
The Mummy of Herakleides at the J. Paul Getty Museum’s Getty Villa Malibu is an Egyptian mummy from the Roman period (about A.D. 150). To explain the mummification process, the Getty asked Dynamic Diagrams to create a short movie for display in the gallery.
This particular mummy has several unique features, revealed by CT scans, including the removal of the heart (more commonly the lungs were removed) and the placement of a mummified ibis on the abdomen of Herakleides within the final wrapping.
Using 3D modeling software we animated the process by which the nearly 2000-year-old artifact was created. The final cut, with voice over, has now been posted to the Getty web site and YouTube:
August 20, 2009, 2:43 pm
3D Modeling of the Old School
by Henry Woodbury
This is just one artifact from an exhibit of 18th and 19th century U.S. patent models at Harvard University. The exhibit, Patent Republic, is on the second floor of Harvard’s Science Center and is open weekdays through December 11. Wired.com has an article and slideshow.
August 17, 2009, 3:46 pm
Stop Motion Marketing
by Henry Woodbury
This is a response to a D&AD Student Award “bespoke creative brief” by Hewlett-Packard. Titled HP – invent, it was created by Matt Robinson and Tom Wrigglesworth.
I just wish it were longer.
May 19, 2009, 11:16 am
Twitter as Public Art
by Lisa Agustin
Check out “Visible Tweets”, a visualization of Twitter intended for public spaces or, as creator Cameron Adams puts it, “a Twitter visualizer for rock concerts.” Simply enter whose tweets you’d like to see, and choose one of three animation styles to see the tweets letter by letter, rotating as they are linked to each other, or as a tag cloud that morphs from one tweet into the next. Adams’ allusion to rock concerts stems from his assertion that Twitter is normally about the chatter that takes a back seat to the main event (but doesn’t have to):
Twitter gives a voice to an audience who for many years have played a subservient role to those who were officially there to speak. But who says they have less to say?
May 18, 2009, 12:21 pm
This is Not a Painting
by Henry Woodbury
Take a look at the Art of Science 2009 Gallery for some stunning images generated by researchers in a wide variety of scientific disciplines.
The image above is an unusual example in that it starts with an artistic representation. Researchers loaded a bitmap of the Mona Lisa into the memory of a test computer, then examined it after power interruptions of increasing lengths.
The title “The Persistence of Memory” is both literally descriptive of the experiment and a clever reference to Salvator Dali’s most famous painting.
February 18, 2009, 8:53 pm
3D Modeling Reveals Construction of Saint Ginés
by Henry Woodbury
In conjunction with a current exhibition of Luisa Roldana’s Saint Ginés de La Jara, the J. Paul Getty Museum created a video of the techniques used to create the medieval polychrome statue.
Dynamic Diagrams work is featured in the first section of the video, in which 3D modeling software is used to recreate the assembly of the XVII century wooden sculpture.
February 3, 2009, 9:28 am
Lego Minimalism
by Henry Woodbury
Christoph Niemann has another abstract city column up.
January 21, 2009, 11:31 am
Examples, Symbols, and Signposts
by Henry Woodbury
Comics impresario Scott McCloud takes on the TED conference and delivers an engaging and funny talk titled “Understanding comics.” The title doesn’t do McCloud justice. He’s really talking about vision. And it’s a great presentation.
One reason for that is McCloud’s playfulness. Even as he unpacks his thesis, he tells stories, plugs in cross-references, and puns on his own ideas. When he gets to talking about comics he uses simple, but effective animations and symbols to highlight concepts such as directionality, space, and time.
Ah, but maybe this is too easy. He’s a comic artist, talking about comics, and his examples are comics.
Not true. When McCloud is talking about ideas, he is equally creative. Except for one key sequence, there are almost no words on his slides. Instead, McCloud offers visual references — a picture of Jung when talking about Jung, a sequence of Ray Charles, Albert Einstein, Wernher Von Braun, and Thomas Edison as he describes his father: ”a blind genius rocket scientist inventor.” He also uses simple, but effective symbols such as an eye to symbolize science, “where what we see and can ascertain are the foundation for what we know.”
(hat tip to Garr Reynolds at Presentation Zen)
December 29, 2008, 3:20 pm
The Year in Pictures
by Henry Woodbury
Almost every newspaper web site has a mesmerizing show.
The New York Times arranges their collection by category. I prefer the chronological order — and startling juxtapositions — of The Boston Globe’s collection (part 2, part 3).
Sports, politics, war, and disaster predominate, but some of my favorite pictures are those of science and nature, such as this photo from The Boston Globe:
December 17, 2008, 11:03 am
Rivermap Visualization by Kerr | Noble
by Lisa Agustin
The recently announced breakup of design studio Kerr | Noble prompted me to revisit some of their work, including “Rivermap” from 1999, in which the meandering contours of the River Thames are depicted using the John Banck’s poem from 1783, “A Description of London.” The map uses the Caslon font, which was designed at the same time that the poem was written. Lovely.
See the London Design Museum’s site for an interview with the duo, including samples of their work.
December 3, 2008, 9:45 am
I Heart Coffee
by Henry Woodbury
Christoph Niemann brews up a brilliant illustrated essay on one man’s history with coffee. Don’t miss the chart on coffee-bias-over-time about halfway through (oh sure, it could be improved, Tuftelike, but that’s not the point).
October 22, 2008, 2:47 pm
Manga Sommelier
by Henry Woodbury
Comics are everywhere. From The New York Times Food and Wine section comes this story of a serendipitous intersection of comic talent and love of wine. Four years ago Yubo and Shin Kibayashi created their series “The Drops of the Gods” centered on a young hero named Shizuku Kanzaki:
At the start of the series, Shizuku has rebelled against his father, a famous wine critic, by refusing to drink wine and working instead for a brewery. Suddenly, though, his father dies and leaves in his will a description of 12 wines he considers the world’s best, comparing them to the disciples of Jesus.
Pitted against his adopted brother, who happens to be a sommelier, Shizuku must catch up in his knowledge so he can find the 12 wines mentioned in his father’s will and inherit his father’s vast cellar.
Now the comic has spread beyond Japan to other East Asian countries slowly opening up to alcohol imports:
At Addiction Plus, a trendy Italian restaurant in central Seoul, men in their late 20s to early 40s often ask about wines featured in the comic, said the owner, Kim Chin-ui, 38.
“They won’t mention that they’ve read the comic, though it’s pretty obvious,” Mr. Kim said. “They try to insert terms like ‘terroir’ or ‘marriage’ to show off — normally, to their colleagues or dates.”
“But I don’t think the women are impressed,” Mr. Kim added. “I can tell from their faces. I mean, the women know where the terms are coming from, because they’ve read the same comic.”
October 8, 2008, 12:44 pm
Political Word Clouds in Color
by Henry Woodbury
Using the Wordle platform, blogger Ann Althouse created a pair of word clouds from last night’s Barack Obama – John McCain U.S. presidential debate.
McCain’s cloud:
Obama’s cloud:
Althouse makes a profound point:
The most interesting words — like “Jell-O” and “corpse” — were only said once and stay off of their clouds. I’d like a program that makes a graphic of all the words that only appear once. They’re especially… important.
From a design perspective, what’s important is that word color, font, and placement don’t mean anything. Wordle allows you to choose your own colors and fonts for your word cloud and provides a gallery of placement options (horizontal, vertical, half and half, etc.). You can randomize all settings or reposition the words using current settings until you like the way they look.
Althouse is a law professor, but she has an art background and often blogs on art, photography, and the media. She clearly went for an aesthetic result in these two clouds. The McCain cloud looks like the “blue chill” palette, but I think the Obama cloud uses a custom palette, one designed to be different but complementary. Not that that means anything.
August 28, 2008, 11:28 am
Groovin’ with Some Energy
by Henry Woodbury
Here’s an ad that actually caused me to click.
Areva, “the no. 1 nuclear energy products and services vendor in America,” has constructed a new print and Internet ad campaign around the birds-eye isometric view of its world. The Web animation shows energy production and use from mining to power generation to the disco.
It reminded me of the Royskopp video we linked here, but with a somewhat different rationale. Both animations were done by the French firm H5 (look under FILMS > CLIPS for Royskopp; under FILMS > PUBLICITE for Areva).
August 28, 2008, 10:57 am
Infoviz Art on Slate
by Lisa Agustin
Slate offers its take on “infoviz art” via this slide show of visualizations. It includes the usual candidates, like Martin Wattenberg’s famous Name Voyager, as well as lesser-known works like Golan Levin’s The Dumpster, a visualization of blog-documented teenage breakups from 2005, which was co-commissioned by The Whitney Museum’s ArtPort and Tate Online.
July 2, 2008, 11:17 am
The Fun of Getting There
by Henry Woodbury
Illustrator Christopher Niemann offers a wonderful tale of small boys and the New York City subway system. Yes, it’s another post about transit systems. How can I resist.
I myself have taken my motion-obsessed son on several circular ferry boat trips, including the Staten Island Ferry and the Québec-Lévis Ferry (approximate crossing time: 10 minutes).
June 26, 2008, 11:52 am
Running the Numbers: A Portrait of America
by Lisa Agustin
To photographer Chris Jordan, today’s American culture is the product of daily and often unconscious decisions made by individual citizens. Further, these decisions can add up, to the detriment of the environment or the population (“One million plastic cups are used on airline flights in the US every six hours.”)
While such statistics are important, these large numbers are also abstract, harder to comprehend, and therefore easier to dismiss. Jordan’s exhibition, Running the Numbers, addresses this by visualizing such data in a way that makes these numbers tangible and accessible. Each large-format photograph is the result of assembling many small images (or individual choices, if you prefer). For example, the image “Skull With Cigarette, 2007″ (based on a painting by Van Gogh) is an assemblage of 200,000 packs of cigarettes, or the equivalent of Americans who die from smoking every six months.
From the artist’s statement:
My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month…Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, I hope to raise some questions about the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.
Jordan’s approach to visualizing statistics addresses a common challenge in visualizing complex data. Statistics themselves will do little to convince or persuade an audience and can even have the opposite effect. (When was the last time you were inspired by a pie chart?) But presenting data in the context of a visual analogy or story makes the numbers easier to grasp, more memorable, and more likely to motivate.
For more on Chris Jordan, see: http://www.chrisjordan.com/
For his related talk at this year’s TED conference, see: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/279
June 26, 2008, 10:59 am
New York City Waterfalls
by Henry Woodbury
Artist Olafur Eliason’s public art project, New York City Waterfalls, officially opens today.
There’s a lengthy write-up on The New York Times City Room blog, while the project’s elegant Flash-based web site provides background information, photos, directions, and this visual explanation (click on “About The Waterfalls” then “How The Waterfalls Work”):
May 5, 2008, 2:05 pm
Harvard Business Review Discovers “Emerging Science of Visualization”
by Mac McBurney
Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda Viégas, the two best-known creators of IBM Research’s Many Eyes, brief business execs on the benefits of collaborative information visualization.
Our research has found that the compelling presentation of data through visualization’s advanced techniques generates a surprising volume of impassioned conversations. Viewers ask questions, make comments, and suggest theories for why there’s a downward trend here or a data cluster there. That level of engagement could foster the kind of grassroots innovation CEOs dream of.
The article is available in the May 2008 issue of Harvard Business Review and for free online (at least for now):
You’ll also find Viégas and Wattenberg in MoMA’s Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition.
- History Flow, their 2003 visualization of changes in Wikipedia: http://moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/106
- Thinking Machine 4, by Wattenberg and Marek Walczak, shows a computer’s possible future chess moves. http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/283/
Finally, for even more info-vis star-watching, Viégas and two other designers will join John Maeda (an info design rockstar if ever there was one) later this month for IN/VISIBLE: Graphic Data Revealed. From the event’s blurb:
The visual ethics required in information graphics increase the designer’s burden from faithful executor to editorial arbiter. How do design choices affect the integrity of the data being portrayed?
If you see me there, say hello: http://www.aigany.org/events/details/08FD/
May 2, 2008, 10:02 am
A New (Old) Subway Map
by Henry Woodbury
The New York Times City Room blog reports that Men’s Vogue will publish an updated version of Massimo Vignelli’s iconic 1972 subway map:
With its 45- and 90-degree angles and one color per subway line, the 1972 subway map by Massimo Vignelli was divorced from the cityscape, devoid of street or neighborhood names. It was criticized because its water was not blue and its parks were not green. Paul Goldberger called it “a stunningly handsome abstraction” that “bears little relation to the city itself.”
New:
Old:
Part of a continuing series:
