FITC 06: Ben Fry Makes Sense Out Of 010101 Nonsense
A screenshot of Genomic Valence visualization doesn’t do justice when you can say you’ve actually witnessed the application in action on a huge projector in front of an audience whose is just wow’d out.
Presentation Title
Playing With Data
Speaker(s)
Ben Fry (Ben Fry.com, The MIT Aesthetics and Computation Group, Processing.org)
Did I Stay For The Whole Thing?
Captivated from beginning to end. And then after the presentation was done, I was captivated again.
Reason For Attending
Wanted to see what this Processing fuss is all about.
Highlights
He talked about this umbrella of Computational Information Design whose goal is to take vast amounts of low-level abstract data and sculpted it in an interactive or visually appetizing manner that will trigger an emotional response. He demonstrated this notion using very abstract binary code and rendered it into something visually concrete and cognitively tangible. It’s only when we are able to take data to a higher level that we can see the relationships within that data which if we view data in it’s raw form, it would overwhelm us.
Ben went over some of his recent experiments. We looked at the binary data found inside a ROM of an Atari-like video game that he used to play when he was growing up. He then went on to explain how he was able to emulate the game using Processing. He then bumped it up a notch by showing us the Super Mario Bros. ROM and then reassembled it into the video game we all love.
He talked about his visualization work with genetics (Genomic Cartography) which was probably way over the audience’s head. I know it was way above mind. A side-consequence of his presentation was promoting Processing, a 2d/3d graphics API for Java.
Constructive Criticisms
Very intellectually engaging speaker who I believe did a suburb job of taking the audience to the low-levels of binary and then lift them up to a bird’s eye view where the numbers become visual elements that we can better interpret. I don’t know about the other people in the crowd but I walked away with a true appreciation of the high-level tasks that I do with a computer.
Would I See This Person Talk Again?
Yes. And at the end of the presentation, I would do the same thing this one guy did at the end of it: He requested Fry to show that spinning letters sphere thing-a-ma-jig. I have to admit that I was pretty blown away by it and also the fact that it’s actually useable. Definitely a very rich user experience. Later on I found out more about it on his MIT site. There are screen shots of it
Post Event Action
Give Ben Fry’s PhD dissertation (PDF) a good read; Keep an eye out for the multi-media book he is co-writing.
FITC 06: See other reviews
