I’m kind of sad this is for new things only, so I can’t post about re-finding Black MIDI.

But here’s something close. Specimen Box, by the Office for Creative Research, is a visualization/sonification for botnets. Data comes from Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit.

Specimen Box – Sonification from The OCR on Vimeo.

It has 3 views: 1. see all botnets animated as messages come in, 2. see one or two botnets alone as “retina plots” and listen to their activity (video above), 3. plot botnets along 3 axes. It’s oddly soothing to listen to them. I think the unlikely but awesome outcome of this would be that people can listen to it and hear patterns in the botnets that help them fight them. Less awesome but more likely: makes botnets more approachable, both raising awareness of an issue while lessening fear. It’s kind of hard to be scared of one of these things playing a soothing noise.

I’d like to know, well, if it works. If it’s useful; if it helps people to find out more things about botnets, or if it’s just pretty. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Fatberg (warning: kind of gross), on the other hand, is somewhat more organic. It’s a giant mountain of fat. They aim to build it in the ocean and get it to the size of an oil rig. I think it’s cool to take something so common and unseen, and make it definitely seen. I know it’s not really their goal, but I’d think that it would be pretty effective in preventing future sewer clogs, if enough people saw it. Plus, it could be a neat piece against the factory farming system and crazy quality of meat we eat, if they wanted. But it’s not.

They insist it’s “not a speculative design project”, but rather “inspirational data” to stimulate the imagination. I don’t know, that sounds like a speculative design project to me. It’s almost too flippant, like a stunt more than something to actually make you think about anything in particular. Still, I appreciate the scale, and the willing to deal with the squeamish.