Information visualization et al. » Visual experiments

The Morphing City

Pedro Miguel Cruz — Mon, 31 May 2010 01:49:02 +0000

The Morphing City is a visualization study where a city mutates its shape accordingly with the traffic on its main arteries. Those morphs tend to traduce the actual perceived distances within a city, bypassing the common perception based on its geographical mapping.

This visualization model was executed for the city of Lisbon. To attain it, topological information was gathered from OpenStreetMap to build a skeleton for the city based on its main arteries. The bones of the skeleton are springs that get compressed or distended accordingly with the detected velocities over it. Those distortions affect all the neighboring points and springs as the system is all interconnected.

The data concerning the velocities was gathered in the context of the CityMotion project, and it pays respect to 1534 vehicles in the city of Lisbon during October 2009. That data was averaged to a single day, and aggregated by periods of one hour. Those periods overlap in 50min, meaning that they are iterated by ticks of 10min.

What is being displayed are the distortions on each artery that affect the entire city. If the current speed on that artery is below its average global speed, the artery is compressed (the higher the velocity, the smaller the perceived distance). Similarly, if the speed is over the computed (during pre processing) global average, the artery is distended. The colors also reflect those distortions, with positive deviations traducing warm colors, and negative deviations traducing cold colors.

Another way to perceive the morphs in the city during the day it’s the deformed grid on the bottom right corner of the artifact.

It’s interesting to notice how the city stays compressed during the evening, and how it abruptly expands during the rush hours: 8h-9h and 18h-19h. It’s also interesting to see that the 8h-9h period is by far the most problematic.

What’s behind the fugde

Pedro Miguel Cruz — Fri, 21 May 2010 16:03:56 +0000

Again, I can’t help myself to publish some pretty fudged artifacts that arise in the process of trying to turn complex physical systems into information visualization.

And that’s the system behind those artifacts. Believe it or not, the system reacts to the data concerning the traffic in Lisbon during October 2009 from 17h to 18h.

What’s behing the fudge from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo.

Glitching Lisbon

Pedro Miguel Cruz — Wed, 19 May 2010 21:59:54 +0000

Ah! What the fudge?! While I was working on a different kind of visualization for Lisbon’s traffic, I came up with this glitch. It’s always interesting when programming errors or dubious experiments result in aesthetically pleasing outcomes, but pretty far away from the intended behavior. Meaning: it doesn’t mean anything. Anyway I can tell that the reds represent slow traffic and the greens and blue, average or rapid transit – t h e m o r p h i n g c i t y .

Too bad that my pseudo-scientific consciousness doesn’t allow me to start working on an arty concept that could justify the mere existence of this artifact. It exists, for me, because in the end it’s a big LOL.

Glitching Lisbon from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo.

Empires decline – revisited

Pedro Miguel Cruz — Wed, 12 May 2010 15:41:52 +0000

Empires decline – revisited from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo.

The decline of the largest maritime empires of the 19 and 20th centuries.
A more sober and formal approach. The physics engine was tweaked in order to attain fluid interactions and a mitosis like split. Added the original 13 colonies (USA). Added Ireland. Cuba maintains its perceived independence date for the consistency of the chosen dates for the other territories.

There is more information displayed, as the former colonies persist on the map and head to their current geographical positions. Therefore it is possible to visualize in the end of the narrative how much of the world was once part of an Empire. The timeline is no longer linear as it speeds up if there is nothing going on.

The music was kindly composed for the purpose of this narrative by CHOP WOOD – chopwood.eu

Traffic in Lisbon condensed in one day

Pedro Miguel Cruz — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 00:01:51 +0000

This post presents several experiments (piked between a total of more than 20 generated artifacts) that map 1534 vehicles, during October 2009 in Lisbon, leaving route trails and condensed in one single day. Therefore, the artifacts are animations of the traffic evolution in Lisbon during 24h (from 0:00 to 23:59). In the first artifact, when the traffic is slow, red circles are drawn – traffic clots.

The following artifact is in its essence and aesthetic deviation that brings a visual emphasis on the main traffic routes. Pencil and paper. Darker arteries mean more intense traffic.

In the next artifact the color of the arteries change with the speed of the vehicles. Rapid transit arteries are drawn with greenish and cooler colors, while the sluggish ones are reddish and hotter. Nevertheless, traffic intensity is mapped in the thickness and brightness of the arteries.

The last artifact brings together the ideas of the previous one and the pencil and paper one. The intention was the bring a bigger emphasis for the areas that have major traffic problems (slower routes). The white dots represent the vehicles themselves. Eye candy, eye candy.

These visualization artifacts were developed in the context of CityMotion and my master thesis at DEI/FBA.

Lisbon traffic per day of the week

Pedro Miguel Cruz — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:02:28 +0000

1534 vehicles in Lisbon, October 2009, with routes mapped for each day of the week.

Aaron in Lisbon?

Pedro Miguel Cruz — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:38:48 +0000

Getting back to the Lisbon only dataset, I have 1534 taxis vehicles to map during October 2009. How will it look like using the same production scheme as the last artifact? Eye candy, eye candy. Not much to extract. Also, I’m noticing that I have to go into more complex data filtering and clustering schemes, as the taxis’ routes seem to climb some walls…

Hello… Aaron Koblin!

Pedro Miguel Cruz — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:19:55 +0000

When you start in a field, it’s not a bad idea to start imitating some reference work. Aaron Koblin’s Flight Patterns are a reference in information aesthetics. Is this work going to evolve in something closer to Koblin’s Flight Patterns? I plan to differentiate, but I don’t mind to pass through it as natural work path.

Hello… colorful Portugal!

Pedro Miguel Cruz — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 04:42:36 +0000

Continuing to explore. The dataset with more than 3 million entries for two months, “only” reports to 496 unique taxis. Each one is represented by a single random color. I see how much the metropolitan areas are colorful comparing to the rest of the territory. I also notice how certain routes are stuck to one color, meaning that taxi drivers operate at a regional level (uuh, what an elaborate conclusion…). Looking further.

Hello… Portugal!

Pedro Miguel Cruz — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 01:30:32 +0000

Looks like I couldn’t avoid myself in taking a look into traffic data (taxis) for all over Portugal, between November and December 2008. Continuing to explore. The dataset with more than 3 million entries for two months, “only” reports to 496 unique taxis.