Wavefields: intense animated data graphics

This video is also available on YouTube and Vimeo

“Wavefields” are data graphics that draw on and completely fill the entire display surface, using every pixel on the data plane to show high-resolution, complex, multiple, animated statistical data-flows. Wavefields extend my work on sparklines.

These high-definition videos of waves (that is, very rich 3D time-series projected onto screen flatland) sketch out methods to bring color, layering, cross-flows, overlaps, and animation to the display of statistical data. Note the vertical flows on an apparent plane separate from the horizontal flows.

To see wavefields more deeply, it is helpful to slow or stop the animation by the movie controls for pace and forward/backward.

Andrei Severny and I generated these wavefields by editing HD movies of water waves and reflections on those waves. The thin white sparklines result from waves activating edges of a big sculpture (Hogpen Hill #1) reflected in the water.

The ideas here are to blur and to reduce distinctions between movies and statistical graphics, to get some visual depth to data graphics, and to bring all the capacities of HD movie-making to data-graphics-making. As the metaphor for sparklines is the resolution of typography, the metaphor for wavefields is the HD video (which records approximately 1 gig per minute, an excellent data throughput).

The next steps are to show full 2D fields instead of the strips of data shown here, to provide some subtle grid-lines for scaling and reference-stabilizing the data flow, and to use some arrows and letters to label key elements.

During slow scrolling across the image immediately above, note the vertical line artifacts, which suggest that error bars, data extremes, and scaling lines could appear intermittently during animated displays of sparklines or datafields.