Admire – Cindermedusae

Cindermedusae parametrically generates a 3d model of a jellyfish-life creature. It then takes that model and animates it as if it were moving through water.
I greatly admire this project since it simulates organic lifeforms in a realistic way. However, instead of generating typical looking jellyfish, the author added a cool touch and made the jellyfishes’ look inspired by Ernst Haeckel.

I have been really interested in simulations for a long time, so seeing a simulation relating to biology (of which both my parents have degrees in) is even more exciting to me.

Disappoint – Game Tree Interactive

http://infosthetics.com/archives/nadal_game_tree2.jpg

Game Tree Interactive builds the above tree representing every single tennis game that Rafael Nadals has played. In each circle above, a red circle means that the opponent was winning the game at that point, a white circle represents a tie, and a blue circle represnets Rafael Nadal having the lead. I think that this project is interesting and informative, eg he has never lost a game 40 – love. However, I am a bit disappointed with it since it falls short on the interactive side. The only part that is interactive is hovering over each line shows the total number of points won or lost at that stage in the game. I was personally expecting something more.

Surprise – The Flavor Connection

The Flavour Connection shows a 2d graph of a large number of foods where each column represents the food category, and each row represents how many other foods are connected to each food in that row. The size of each dot on the graph represents how commonly the food is found in recipes, and any two dots connected by a red line show how many flavours are shared between the two foods. I was not expecting much when I clicked on the project. I thought it would be just another infographic. But I was quite surprised at the detail and the intuitive interactivity done in this project. I lost a lot of time simply exploring the graph for flavour connects. Did you know that roast beef shares a flavour with 49 other graphed foods yet regular beef only shares 19?