“How might we visualize data that isn’t quantitive?”
Butterfly
Video, Motion and Data Visualization Design
Role
Research, Ideation, Prototyping, Animation
Software
Adobe After Effects, Illustrator
Butterfly is an experimental data visualization and an exploration into how to visualize soft data (qualitative) compared to hard data (quantitative). It is meant to show an approach to visualizing “data” not proven or too theoretical or not measurable.
In order to examine visualizing soft data, the visualization evolves based off of the butterfly effect from chaos theory and the word butterfly as the soft data in an ever-changing composition.
Exploration that was used as inspiration for integrating mono-type into visualization
Research
Initial research began with my interest in data visualization and in the question: what is really data? Often associated with numbers, true facts, computers and scientific research.
How might we show data that is not true/vague/ unknown? Not numbers?
How might we make a data visualization that reveals what is not proven or too theoretical or not measurable?
How might we visualize that?
Can I track “un-trackable data” or “vague data”? This formed my base theory for my project on a proposal to visualize vague data:
Vague Data ☞ Pattern ☞ Output
Initial Approach
The initial approach was to involve participants into an interactive art installation to collect art data, to become a part of an evolving art system, and then animated to see the art data (interactions) change. This idea soon changed, as instead the visualization is what the interactions could’ve looked like. But, the core of the project didn’t change: conditional design. This approach focuses on the process being the final design.
Moodboard for the look and feel of the visualization
Why Butterfly?
The butterfly circle pattern are based on the continuous loops in the generation of the butterfly effect in the Lorenz attractor. The bright colours against a dark background are from referencing the computer-generated visuals of the butterfly effect.
The butterfly effect is from chaos theory and it “is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic non-linear system can result in large differences in a later state.” Conditional design’s approach on process as the design plays into the butterfly effect theory in the visualization.
In the visualization, the initial conditions were set by me in choosing the composition and the small changes were the letters interacting with the composition. The small changes are that with each letter showing up, it altered the surrounding dots to a different colour, therefore continually changing the composition. The later state is the final form of the butterfly pattern which resolves to the full pattern being shown and showing the viewer what they were looking at from far away at the end of the video. The song is also chosen with intent as the obscure voice that appears throughout the song says “Fly like a butterfly”, further connecting to the butterfly theme.
Outcome
This was my most abstract project to date as it was very theory based. In the end, I still accomplished my original goals and objectives that I set out when proposing my idea before designing:
The artwork will evolve itself based off of the choices used
The artwork itself is influenced by the human presence/actions
The output of the artwork is predefined by myself and changed by the participant*
*The word participant can be dualistic. As the designer, I can be considered the participant as I was the one interacting with the composition and changing it and a participant can also be the viewer where they are the one piecing together the visualization, therefore they are changing their perspective of the visualization.
