Cascade on Wheels
Cascade on Wheels is a visualization project that intends to express the quantity of cars we live with in big cities nowadays. The data set we worked on is the daily average of cars passing by streets, over a year. In this case, a section of the Madrid city center, during 2006. The averages are grouped down into four categories of car types. Light vehicles, taxis, trucks, and buses.
We made two different visualizations of the same data set. We intended not just to visualize the data in a readable way, but also to express its meaning, with the use of metaphors. In the Walls Map piece, car counts are represented by 3D vertical columns emerging from the streets map, like walls. The Traffic Mixer piece, where noise is the metaphor, is an hybrid of a visualization and a sound toy. The first piece focuses more on showing the data in a readable and functional way, while the latter focuses more on expressing the meaning of the data and immersing the user into these numbers. Both pieces try to complete each other.
Read the interview at we make money not art.
The pieces
Walls Map
Launch the Walls Map video: fullsize quicktime or shrinked flash (on vimeo).
Traffic Mixer
Launch the Traffic Mixer video: fullsize quicktime or shrinked flash (on vimeo).
A few things worth noting
Not all streets in the section are included in the data set, but in the most part the ones with the highest traffic are.
On the Walls Map, busses and trucks categories are represented with 3 times the size of the other categories. This is not rigorous, but it's an approximation that helps in illustrating better the impact of these vehicles.
Credits
People involved
Cascade on Wheels is a project by Steph Thirion (concept, design, direction, coding), and was initially developed during the 2007 Visualizar workshop at the Medialab Prado in Madrid, with the help of various collaborators:
- The Traffic Mixer piece was directed and coded by Cristobal Castilla (from aer), who was also heavily involved in the research and sketching process of the whole project.
- Graphic design for interfaces and global look and feel was created by Jose Hernandez (from aer).
- Ben Fry, Santiago Ortiz, and José Luis de Vicente have been tutoring and brainstorming with us throughout the long conception and sketching process. Their participation was crucial in shaping the ideas and structure of the project.
- The polygons extrusions algorithms were constructed by Ricard Marxer and Julian Oliver, who also have assisted throughout the whole workshop, on ideas, handling 3D, sound generating, data scrapping and hacking like on tv. We wouldn’t have made it nowhere near we did without them.
- Nicolas Tremeaud assisted us in technical research with map APIs, and in data handling.
Thanks to the Medialab Prado team for the help, organization, kindness, and the endless coffee and beer.
And thanks to all the workshop participants for the energy, the ideas and the great time.
Software used
- Both pieces were built in Processing. The Walls Map makes use of the geomerative and OCD libraries. The Traffic Mixer uses the minim library.
- Data scrapping and handling was done in Ruby, with a blend of builder, hpricot and rexml.
- The editor to draw the polygons on the map and link them with the data set was built in Macromedia Flash.
Data set
The data set was extracted from Madrid Movilidad.
Special thanks to José Miguel Medrano from the Medialab for finding that treasure.
Contact
Steph Thirion: