I want to visualize the colors of places and the emotions experienced at these places. I am inspired by the Flickr Flow project, which calculated the relative proportions of different colors seen in photos taken in each month of the year, and plotted them on a wheel. I want to create something of similar form, but with another dimension added to the visualization, which is the human experience at the place. I would scrape and collect pictures off of Instagram of a certain place, done by specifying the geo-location (maybe hashtag too), and get the most common colors that appear in these photos. This is interesting because filters are incorporated in Instagram, and they often indicate the moods experienced at places, so I propose that there is correlation between color and emotion. I would plot them on a wheel or some kind of geometric shape (I love geometric shapes, as seen in my previous assignments…), and the shape on which the colors are plotted would be controlled by the emotions felt at the place.  I would measure emotion via the captions of photos with a sentiment analysis machine, most likely some kind of API I can find online.

Here are some questions I wish to answer with my software.

• Compare macro places like cities (pittsburgh vs ny vs london vs tokyo), as well as smaller places like landmarks (eiffel tower vs fiji mountain vs statue of liberty). are colors more vibrant in more specific places?

• Colors of cities, are they that different? more industrial cities vs. less populated cities? 

• Emotions experienced at places, do certain places arouse more emotions than others?

• Compare and contrast emotions and colors in sensitive places like paris bombing site, 911 site, vietnamese war memorial, hurricane kartrina in new orleans, concentration camps in germany

• Compare the range and versatility of emotions in cities–i.e. do people feel more things at once place more than another? like, Pittsburgh vs San Francisco?