Eyebeam 10th Anniversary &ndash Dirt Party Social Network Visualization

A three week marathon of concept, design and production to create a unique live-data, dynamic, information motion graphic for Eyebeam's 10th Anniversary fund raising event. Eyebeam is a non-profit art and technology center that provides a fertile context and state-of-the-art tools for digital research and experimentation.

Our social network visualization supported this theme by featuring four different dynamic motion graphics concepts which played one after another on a series of 50" lcd displays throughout the venue.

Full documentation video in development. Meanwhile, this video may suffice.

Who is Talking to Who? – The Six Degrees of Uranus

Presenting a galaxy of event goers, each represented by a planet floating in space. As visitors meet more people, their planet grows in size and becomes a star, the most famous become shining stars. Visitors who have most recently talked to each other are drawn closer together in this visualization, causing the most famous to pull towards the center and for the entire social space to be in constant flux.

Overlayed are the degrees of seperation between a randomly selected individual and everyone else at the event. The motion graphic iterates through every connection to every other party-goer possible.

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Gossip Zombie Epidemic – Visualizing Disease Spread

We choose a single party-goer to seed with the zombie virus. Each time an infected meet a new person, there is a chance of an infection. The holy grail of epidemic data, we know who infected who and when. We use this data along with the social network landscape to paint a portait of the spread of infection over time.

We also keep track of when each person visits the bar, and represent this as an increasingly intense vibration in their planet.

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This or That? – Presenting Live Statistics

Throughout the evening, the audience is polled with a few easy questions: “In or Out?”, “Detox or Botox?” and “Digital or Analog?” just to name a few. We show results in the order they came in, preserving the sense of temporality. By maintaining use of the planets, you can not only see which choice was selected over another, but the male/female ratio of each choice and where the more famous visitors are voting.

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High Score – Non-representational Data Art

As a departure from the heavily informative, we thought it would be engaging to present the party-goers as sprites from the classic arcade game, Pac-Man. As the visitors talk to each other, their Pac-Man sprites approach one another on screen, creating truely live data art.

The highscore roll presents a look under the hood, showing the popularity scores for each party goer. This inspired game and competition among some partiers, trying to meet and befriend as many people as possible.

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Collecting Live Data with the nTag

This project would not have been possible without the excellent nTag. The nTag is a networking device designed for corporate conferences, to be worn around the neck. This digital nametag is infused with an infrared transcever. When two nTag wearers stand across from each other, in conversation, the nTag devices recognise each other and beam the event via wifi to a central database.

We use this database along without our own supplimental information to create an incredibly rich and detailed social network which changes over time, live as the event occurs.

As each visitor arrived to the event, the nTag technicians provided them with a configured nTag device

This posed an interesting technical challenge in order to quickly and efficiently parse the heavy influx of new information, updating all of the qualities of the visualization while still delivering a smooth and engaging motion graphic.