Northern Words

Visualizing the evolution of ten years of new media discourse

Inspired by the ebb and flow dance of the Northern Lights that frequent the skies above the Banff Centre in Canada’s Rocky Mountains, Northern Words is a visualization of the evolution of the Banff New Media Institute (BNMI) discourse from 1993 to 2004.

Word frequency statistics were generated using text analysis software that analyzed the corpus of texts in BNMI’s 1993-2004 archives (websites, summit agendas, press releases, etc.). These frequencies were mapped both to word size and glow intensity. Large words with a bright glow behind were important topics in the discourse in that year, while small words with a dark sky behind were less significant.

Read the columns vertically to discover the popular topics for a particular year, read the rows horizontally to discover the evolution of particular topics over time.

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flowerGarden

Visualizing social networking and discussion in a small community

Live Flash Demo (for as long as web browsers support it!)

FlowerGarden is an interactive visualization of social networking and concept sharing occurring within a small group (30-80 individuals). It was deployed at the Bodies in Play Summit, a conference held at the Banff New Media Institute in May of 2005. Set up as a projected installation in the event space, participants continually entered information about whom their conversations were with and what they discussed. Over the course of the event, the flowerGarden grew from a few sparse flowers to a lush garden as the number of participants (flowers) and conversations (flower petals) increased.

The Flash web application allows participants to input conversation information (grow mode) or navigate data (explore mode), visualized as an overlapping combination of a social network graph and a word cloud concept map. Each participant is represented as a flower with their initials in the centre and one petal for each conversation they have entered. A vine links participants who have had conversations. The frequency of concept entries is mapped to word size and position, showing commonly used terms in the center of the circle. The grow mode has now been disabled but visitors can explore the garden grown by participants at the original conference in 2005.

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