i202 Fall 2010 School of Information, UC Berkeley

short description of installation

video of installation

description of interaction with installation

I get chills, and a renewed sense of purpose everytime I watch the video of this installation.  The artists / computer scientists, Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar, have demonstrated how imaginative one can be when choosing how to represent data.  Their aesthetic decisions were not only beautiful, but imbued with meaning. 

Talking points:

0) What kind of lasting impressions do you think art patrons took away from playing and observing this installation?  Do you think it changed them at all?  Do you think that what they learned could have been learned equally well from some other medium (example of other mediums: self-help book on relationships, browsing online dating sites) ?

1) Compare and contrast static forms of displaying data (charts, graphs, info maps, text) with interactive forms (ex. this "I Want You to Want Me" installation).  When is one form better to use than the other?  Do you feel like interactive forms of displaying data makes a deeper impression on the common observer / data analyst / scientist trying to do data analysis?

2) Where do you think visualizations like this have their place?  Is this sort of imaginative interface confined to the art world?  What kind of people might have a vested interest in utilizing similar techniques?