Visualizing Data: Reaction To Aaron Koblin

In looking at Aaron Koblin's work, the pieces seem to be divided into two categories:  those that use amazon's mechanical turk to generate data, and those that simply create visualizations of large data sets.  While the visualizations certainly have their appeal, I have to say that I prefer the amazon mechanical turk projects.

The mechanical turk generated data sets not only provide novel visualizations, but also novel ways of generating the data that led to them.  Seeing how data sets that are created at a micro level are still inexact is an interesting analogy for how larger projects can have an inexact nature to them.  What's more, Koblin's visuals are compelling and unexpected.

By contrast, the visualizations that depend on external data seem to suffer from a forced feel of trying to hard to be futuristic or "different", but in fact ending up being cliche.  The idea of mapping flight patterns or telephone lines has been done a million times, while the "House Of Cards" video is utterly reminiscent of needle pads that fit-form to represent shapes.

Out of all of the pieces, my favorite is probably the sheep market:  the representations are novel and humorous, the data collection interesting, and the representation enjoyable to navigate.  In short, it presents some serious concepts about data generation in the modern world while at the same time giving them a humanistic feel.

If anything, that is the shortcoming in Koblin's less enticing work:  the absence of humanity and a feeling of overly-conscious attempts to be futuristic and technologically advanced.  Part of this reaction to Koblin's work is probably driven by over exposure to faux-futurist imagery, but it's also a result of the fact that Koblin's more human works are simply more novel and easier to relate to.