Data Visualization

“Data”, that’s a scary word. All we can picture are mountains of numbers that are indiscernible from one another. But this is also a fact, entire genomes are getting sequenced, the universe is being mapped out… we’re entering an era of big data, even bigger mountains. So… what do we do with it ? We manipulate it, we design it, so that big data can be digested, dare I say enjoyed.

Sometimes it’s even fun to browse this mountain of information. At least that’s what I thought when I found the We Feel Fine project. This emotional search engine crawls blogs and networking sites, picking up sentences which include “I feel” or “I am feeling”, as well as the gender, age and location of the people posting those sentences. The result is a database of several million human feelings, sorted out, displayed, in the hopes of creating a piece of art for everyone, by everyone, sprouting from our deepest feelings.

Check out the java applet here.

- Agathe of Frontal Cortex

(Source: artandsciencejournal.com)