via Fast Company

The exquisite corpse model is rooted in the surrealist movement, and we are inspired by how many experiments currently in public domain play with its framework (or lack thereof). Our take on the model—in which we essentially asked a group of collaborators to submit sentences/fragments—was to create a dynamic visualization for the “exquisite” story our writers had crafted. These collective fragments formed a base on which we layered sensory artifacts, from voice-over to tagged visuals, and we were curious as to how far we could take the experience.

They asked 150 people to submit a Twitter-length sentence. Using those fragments, they compiled a 1600-word story narrated by a single voice and illustrated it with images from Flickr linked to key words.

Exquisite Corpse Experiment – Chapter One from IDEO Labs on Vimeo.

via Core77

MIT Media Lab’s Tangible Media Group have developed Recompose, an experimental touch interface that provides tactile feedback.

Recompose is a new system for manipulation of an actuated surface. By collectively utilizing the body as a tool for direct manipulation alongside gestural input for functional manipulation, we show how a user is afforded unprecedented control over an actuated surface.

Made up of motorized tiles that pop up/down, the 3D interface can be directly manipulated by pressing down on the tiles or simply using gestures by waving your had over various areas of the surface, which move in response to your input. The feedback is a 3D visualization of the user’s physical interaction with the tiles. A camera and projector, combined with computer vision are used to recognize and understand the language of the physical interactions.

via Fast Company

Pop Chart Lab made a detailed mapping of over 100 kitchen implements. I love the visual language in this poster and I learned about some interesting new tools.

via Fast Company

As an avid traveller, I’m a seasoned user of flight search aggregator tools to find the cheapest and most convenient flight that fits my requirements. Tired of scanning through tables of text, I was delighted when I played around with the user-friend Hipmunk, a new flight search tool that visualizes all the flight results in a timeline that makes it easy to read, understand and manipulate.

First off, I love that I can constrain the search to only Star Alliance network since I’ll only fly those airlines to maximize my Aeroplan points.  Once the search is performed, the basic information such as price, airline(s), departure/arrival airports, number of stopovers, stopover airport, flight duration, and departure/arrival times are all colour-coded, organized and displayed in the timeline. Exact details are shown in a popup when you select an individual flight. It hides flights worse than others, decreasing the amount of visual clutter to sort through. In addition to the ability to sort by price, stops, arrival/departure times and duration, Hipmunk can also sorts by agony, which co-founder Adam Goldstein describes as

..a combined function of price, duration, and number of stops—basically the total agony you’ll experience in your butt and your savings.

The draggable departure and arrival times on the visual timeline is not groundbreaking, but it’s definitely a refreshing alternative to the existing flight search engines.

And finally, I gotta give brownie points for the awesome name.

via FlowingData

It’s interesting to note how these stereotypes typically reveal more about the country (or our perception of the them) that is doing the criticizing.

Europe according to Britain

Europe according to France

Europe according to United States

Via FlowingData

One of my favourite bands, Arcade Fire, has collaborated with Google and writer/director Chris Milk to create an experimental video for their song “We Used to Wait”. Made to play in Google Chrome, The Wilderness Downtown starts off asking for the address of your childhood home and then becomes in an incredible audio and visual experience that uses choreographed browser windows of varying sizes popping open or closing and displays animations of digital flying birds flying from one window to the next and a pair of feet running along a street. All of that builds up to a climax when images of your street and childhood home are blended into the video, creating moments of surprise, delight and nostalgia. Self-reflection and sentimental thoughts are triggered near the end with pause allows you to write a message to your younger self, after which animated trees sprout all along your old street.

Using HTML5 technology, the collaborators have created a technologically impressive and creatively piece of work to create an awe-inspiring audio/visual experience.

The places people experience in a city differ depending on whether they are tourists or locals. Mapping geo-tagged photographs illustrate the distinction between tourist shots (red) and local shots (blue) in Montreal. These maps tell a narrative of one’s journey through a city through either the eyes of a local or tourist, highlighting the varied points of interest of each group. And indeed, they are usually quite representative of people’s expected patterns of movement.  More city maps here.

Source: Urban Photo

Source: Information is Beautiful