Cross-writing

Here's an intriguing, albeit nearly unreadable, example of cross-writing, a technique with some vague similarities with wavefields: Source: Christies's London, The Albin Schram Collection of Autograph Letters, 3 July 2007 auction

-- Edward Tufte, June 21, 2007

User-controlled scrolling in datafields

Further exploration of the movies above indicate the value of mixing still-land and movieland in looking at complex data.
(Use the mouse roller-ball to shift among the moving, slowing, and still.) These shifts also might eventually allow showing
measurement scales and typography in particular scenes.

-- Edward Tufte, June 22, 2007

HD movie wavefields (click on each)

-- Edward Tufte, June 25, 2007

Wavefield stills

Photographs by Andrei Severny.

-- Edward Tufte, February 25, 2008

wavefields + medical data

Cardiac visualization, esp. Ultrasound, is frequently used to show heart motion. It seems to me that this could be augmented by an overlay of the 12-lead, 360-degree ECG trace (i.e., aVr, aVl, I,II,III,...) The real-time waveform would be shown synchronously with the PQRST complex using your suggested method, and could highlight ST segment elevation or J-point arrhythmias. Furthermore, a dynamic tracing of cardiac output and stroke volume would serve to illustrate both visually and numerically situations in which stroke volume is shallow and changes in pulse as these would complement and provide the physical "translation" from the numeric to the visual chane in cardiac output. Also applicable to visualzing intra arterial balloon pump (IABP) operation. I could also see the application used as a diagnostic adjunct in emergency departments for patient with acute cardiac ischemia or congestive heart failure.

Just a thought.

-- John Zaleski (email), March 29, 2008

Applied wavefields

Zach Beane has put together some very interesting box office graphics, sort between bump charts and wavefields: http://www.xach.com/moviecharts/

-- Niels Olson (email), August 3, 2008

Response to Wavefields: intense animated data graphics (+new movie with sound)

If you want to work with a programmer to make actual, data-based wavefields, I am at your service.

(I assume this isn't some kind of self-parody.)

Regards, David McCabe.

-- David McCabe (email), August 4, 2008

Event waves

I was recently reviewing the excellent video work on this site, and thought a short video I created might interest this board.

The video considers the problem of illustrating an event wave, that is the space of time between when an event occurs and the time it takes that event to affect an observer.

The video relates to ET illustration of events via slow motion in video, the wavefield videos, as well as ET writings about and photos of horizons.

Event Wave Propagation: Time

Music: "Revolve" by hisboyelroy

In my initial video test, I split the video frame into 7 columns. The width of each column increases until the 7Th column encompasses the entire right side of the video frame and displays a complete 4:3 video. Each column displays a specific offset of about -.33 seconds so that the first column is nearly 2 seconds ahead of the final column. In this way one can watch the video at full speed while anticipating future events.

The idea is also reversible if the spectrum is reversed on the right side of the video and the time offset is set to positive values, allowing events to linger.

A more granular test with smaller offsets with many more columns, would allow for a much more fluid example.


I also wanted to thank you for the inspiration and the content provided on this board.

I'd also be interested to know what ET thinks of Major League Baseball's introduction of slow motion instant replay video for home run calls.

Sincerely,

Jeff Berg

-- Jeff Berg (email), August 30, 2008

Wave Field at Storm King

Maya Lin has a new outdoor piece Wave Field at Storm King Art Center in Beacon, New York. Here's The New York Times video.

A trade-off in wavefield artworks in the landscape is between static vs. dynamic waves. Still waves frozen in contoured land provide the viewer with many good shifting local horizons by means of comfortable walking around the shaped but unmoving land. Dynamic waves, such as windblown hayfields growing on contoured land, are active, flowing, changing (as shown in our wavefield videos above), but are less comfortable for walking around. Dynamic wavefields do, however, provide magnificent views at a distance.

Maintenance of both static or dynamic fields is somewhat difficult because of mowing the wavy ground. Also dynamic wavefields require annual farming operations. Those operations might well generate interesting new seasonal versions of the artwork.

It would be interesting to see Maya Lin's Wave Field planted in winter rye. That way the shape of the land beneath would be projected to the top surface of the waving winter rye, almost as if the land itself was flowing in the wind. Both the static and dynamic versions will look good covered by snow; in fact both will look pretty much alike although the hayfarm dynamic version might be somewhat more textured.

At Hogpen Hill Farms last month we planted 6 acres of winter rye on gently contoured ground to study (1) dynamic wavefield art and (2) how to install large outdoor sculptures on a farmland of waving grain. Maybe we'll have good results in the spring. Those results should provide some evidence and experience relevant to my word-art handwaving above.

-- Edward Tufte, November 8, 2008

Storm King: May Lin's Wave Field

A few days I visited Storm King Art Center and saw the amazing-reaching-for-the- sky Calders, de Surveros, and Libermans. The only David Smith Tower, one of Smith's very best works, was gone, back to the Smith estate.

Below are pictures of Maya Lin's Wave Field. It is very difficult to grow grass on hills in the northeast, with hot summers and cold winters. It takes several years to establish a good grassy field. The tops of hills dry out in the summer, which favors patchy weeds over grass. There was also lot of rain this summer also which in turn provokes erosion and drainage problems for landscape sculpture in the northeast U.S. And so the piece shown below was caught in a chronically complex and difficult climate. The concluding photograph, nonetheless, captures the subtle local horizons produced by the landscape piece.

There are land maintenance problems to be solved before the piece can be fully assessed.

-- Edward Tufte, November 13, 2008

code_swarm - Python from Michael Ogawa on Vimeo. Python is the language of choice for Google's App Engine.
Guido is Guido van Rossom, currently at Google.

-- Niels Olson (email), January 22, 2009