Visualizing data non-visually

Using senses other than eyesight to visualize data is a pretty broad topic. There are a couple of interesting projects that come to mind.

A recent article in Interactions (link) highlights experiments that test if people can match sonifications of a data set (with a particular sampling rate) with their visual graphs. 70 listeners had about a 60% accuracy rate (higher than the 25% random rate).

Another project, called Olly (link & article) aka Smelly Bot,  is a stackable “robot” that releases a smell/”aroma” when you receive a specific event from Facebook, Twitter and the like.

My favorite, though, is not really a visualization, but I’d like to think it opens up possible avenues for exploration. It’s a TED talk by Homaro Canto & Ben Roche about the work they are doing in their Chicago restaurant, Moto. I don’t know if they entire talk is applicable, but being able to print out the taste of your food on a sheet of paper is pretty cool.

I think all of these different senses could potentially open up richer ways to visualize data.

@0:44

Soundmachines

Soundmachines are table-sized instrument for performing electronic music by DJing visual patterns on record-sized discs. Each table has three units of what look like unconventional record players. Each unit spins a disc with concentric geometric patterns that translate into control signals.

I’m pretty tone deaf so I especially appreciate this project. In fact, making music or having to understand music scares me and sometimes I’ll have to ask other people to count down beats for me. It’s pretty intimidating. What I loved about this project is that the mapping between beats, tunes, etc and the geometric patterns on the discs was pretty easy to grasp and it makes the act of making music easy and accessible. Although this project uses Arduino and actual discs, I don’t see a reason why the player couldn’t be virtual: like your iPad. You could also add your own discs for new patterns.

lumiBots

lumiBots are autonomous UV light emitting robots that roam on top of a 1 x 2 meter phosphorescent surface. So, I didn’t particularly love this project. What I did like were the light traces that the bots left behind. I think there’s definitely a lot of potential to make that look interesting. I didn’t really find the final complex pattern that emerged interesting and felt it was pretty random. I do think that there must be other algorithms that create interesting patterns with the traces that are left behind. This could also be because there were only 9 bots: maybe more would make the effect better.