Schlagwort: Interactive Data Visualization
15 | Data Visualization with TouchDesigner 🌱
As I mentioned in my last blog post, I love particle systems. However, in my last prototype, I could only visualize about 10,000 particles. Once this limit was exceeded, the frame rate of the visualization dropped. Unfortunately, since I’m not an expert in coding, I couldn’t fix it. Because particle systems look better with more particles, I wanted to continue exploring the idea. But this time, not with code, but with TouchDesigner.
What is TouchDesigner?
TouchDesigner is software used by artists and developers to create visual effects and interactive multimedia projects. It allows for the creation of real-time graphics, animations, and interactive installations by connecting various visual and audiovisual elements. With TouchDesigner, you can create complex visual representations by simply connecting building blocks or nodes. I delved into the subject of „Projection Mapping“ in TouchDesigner and found it enjoyable. The software also allows for the creation of really cool particle systems, which is perfect for my project. That’s why I created my next prototypes with TouchDesigner.
Visualization
How do I want to visualize everything? I’m not exactly sure. Classic data visualizations mostly consist of conventional charts. These include bar, column, pie, line charts, and so on. That’s not what I want. I want to give it an artistic touch. That’s why I’m using particle systems. Since I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, I just started experimenting, watching a few tutorials, and following them. The following three visualizations were created:
Although these visuals look pretty cool, there’s now a big problem. The issue is: how can I use these to visualize data so that the data’s message is clear and quickly recognizable? Here are my ideas. For the Tornado, I could use the diameter of the vortex. The larger the diameter, the greater the environmental impact of a certain behavior, for example. For the Galaxy, I could use the rotation and size. The faster it rotates and the smaller it is, the worse the data is. For the Lava Flow, I would simply use the flows. The higher the environmental impact, the more lava flows there are until it becomes just one large lava (water)fall. Nonetheless, I will continue experimenting with data visualizations in TouchDesigner, simply because it’s cool and fun. Cheers!
14 | Interactive Data Visualization 🌱
I think I’ve finally come up with an idea that I genuinely want to pursue! I’ve been collecting and noting down ideas, hoping that one day, something cool and feasible would emerge. Now, I believe that moment has arrived. While I haven’t fully fleshed out the concept, here’s a rough summary of what I want to achieve.
I aim to bring digital sustainability closer to people and raise awareness about it. To do this, I want to create an interactive experience that utilizes data visualization. Users will have the opportunity to learn more about digital sustainability and reflect on their own digital activities. The core of this concept is the interactive data visualization, which allows users to see their own digital activities visually. While I want the visualizations to be abstract and visually intriguing, they should also be educational and easy to understand. Currently, my first prototype is visually interesting but not very educational.
Since I personally find visualizations and generative art with particles extremely cool, I decided to create my first data visualization using a particle system. I leveraged my learnings from the „Coding with AI“ workshop and, with the help of ChatGPT, wrote some HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code. The code creates a sphere of particles (which is supposed to resemble a galaxy) that users can customize. There are three input fields where users can enter numbers that affect the number of differently colored particles. Each color represents a different aspect. For example, emissions from online gaming (purple), video streaming (pink), and internet surfing (white). The higher the number, the greater the environmental impact, but I haven’t yet found a correct mathematical formula for this. The prototype is three dimensional
I’m quite satisfied with this first prototype and I think I’ll continue in this direction. You can test the prototype at this link: Particle-World. Cheers!