81 years of budget data and various categories in three diagrams – the United States Fiscal Chart from the 1870 US census atlas is a real blockbuster in the history of data visualisation…
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Review: Dear Data
To craft something requires skills, mastery and patience. It means to create something step by step, with a passion for details and execution. Crafted products are en vogue these days, and in a world where industrial and digital creation processes are the norm, hand-crafted things appeal to us as rare and precious gems. Such are…
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Exhibition: Microbes in Action
MICROPIA is a permanent show within the zoo in Amsterdam. It presents knowledge about animals whom we share our lives with but never see – microbes…
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Workshop: “The Future(s) of the Atlas” (Leipzig)
My work throughout the past years has involved researching current trends as well as the long history of information visualisation. This research focus has led me to peek into a variety of professional and scientific disciplines. Coming from an art history background myself, I have worked with designers, coders and editors, but I have also had the chance…
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Review: Nervous Systems
If you need brain food, some irritation and some art for inspiration – the House of World Cultures in Berlin is an excellent place to turn to. For years, their team has puzzled me with events and exhibitions around topics as diverse as the Whole Earth Catalogue, Ape Culture, Stupid Music or with their ongoing…
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Review: The Feltron Annual Reports
Nicholas Felton‘s work has been an inspiration to many people in the field of information visualisation, not only when he helped Facebook create their timeline to “unlock people’s personal stories”, but most prominently with his series of Annual Reports which present well-chosen and beautifully designed statistics from Felton’s daily life. With these he has inspired…
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Article: “Ephemeral City” (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
Urban cartography has long been an authoritative matter: companies or authorities invested time, energy and money in researching the data and information to be published in city maps. The wide use of mobile internet is about to change this set-up dramatically. Smartphone users today collect data about how they move through the city, they comment…
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Teaching: “Diagrams, Maps, Trees” (Potsdam)
This semester, I have the great pleasure to teach again within the interface design programme of the University of Applied Sciences in Potsdam. Teaching is awesome: you get to work with talented and bright young people and you continually learn something—from having to research material for the sessions, from having to think things through in…
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Review: Map. Exploring the World
When I think about cartography, I am always fascinated by the different associations the term evokes in my brain: from map nerd to mathematical superbrain, from school atlas to interactive data visualisation, from “dusty” library map room to high end technology and design studio. It is mind-boggling to see how cartography is undergoing this major…
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Talk: “Mind the Gap” (Helsinki)
For the first time this year, the organisers behind “Visualising Knowledge” conference in Helsinki (most notably the busy and well-connected designers Juuso Koponen and Jonatan Hildén) have put together an academic symposium as a satellite event to the main conference. The panel and audience included visualisation experts and researchers from various Helsinki research institutions and…
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Talk: “Datavisualisation – age-old, brand new” (Helsinki)
As you may have figured, the history of information vis is one of my favourite research topics at the moment, and I am happy to present some of my findings whenever I can. So I gladly took the opportunity to dig deeper into the subject I had only scratched upon in my earlier talk in…
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Article: “Digital Archives” (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
Almost 44 million objects. That’s how many digitised objects are available through the grand European digital library Europeana today. The digitisation of our cultural heritage is an almost mythical project which has been going on for about 15 years now. Despite all the big challenges and despite the almost impossible task of making digital reproductions…
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