Data crunching as art

A couple years ago, Wired.com featured an article about artist Aaron Koblin, who uses data to create beautiful visual art.

While many people would see lists of numbers and data as dull and mundane, Koblin proves them wrong with exceptional masterpieces compiling data into thought-provoking pieces.

My current desktop background has been one of Koblin's Flight Pattern pieces for quite some time. The graceful beauty of the lines representing flight patterns in 24 hours outline the continental United States and show the power of technology and travel.


He has also done some music videos, one of which I am a huge fan, called The Wilderness Downtown. It is the interactive video project for Arcade Fire's single "We Used to Wait." Utilizing Google Maps to animate the viewer's childhood neighborhood, it creates a sentimental touch that isn't expected in a data-filled world.

http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

His project, Ten Thousand Cents, (http://www.tenthousandcents.com/) puts new meaning to the phrase E Pluribus Unum (From Many One). He divided a picture of a ten-dollar bill into tiny little pieces, then asked people (for one penny each) to re-draw the segment that was sent to them. All the tiny pieces, when put together, look just like a ten-dollar bill, but represent 10,000 different laborer's work.

A project similar to the aforementioned crowdsourced piece is The Sheep Market, where participants were paid to draw "sheep facing to the left. The result, thousands of cartoon sheep, is both funny and unique. Check it out at http://www.thesheepmarket.com/.

To see more of Aaron Koblin's works, go to his website at http://www.aaronkoblin.com/.