San Francisco is Busy - aNCL Series

San Francisco is busy tweeting and this new animation of location based tweets in the Bay Area show actually how busy it is. Geo located tweets are shown as yellow circles that fade away by time, and re-tweets are shown as small yellow points moving onto a line connecting the location of the original tweet and the geo location of the re-tweeter.

The data used is the same as for the San Francisco New City Landscape (NCL) map. Where a virtual landscape was generated from the tweets. More details HERE. This new animated version shows in detail how the different centres ebb and flow as time passes. There are distinct characteristics between the location over times of the day. Basically the Bay bridge keeps it all together.

Interestingly the RT's are a very specific day thing. During the night this information channel is not ver active and people seem to be busy tweeting their own stuff. In a sense this could be hinting at a more formal and business use of the RT function.

This animation is developed in collaboratively Anders Johansson and single-blogs. The data was collected using our CASA Tweet-O-Meter tool, coded by Steven Gray, in association with DigitalUrban.



There is more to come. We will be working our way through the NCL data collection of over 70 cities from around the world. Within the next week will be posting the next city to continue this aNCL (animated New City Landscape) series.

Stop Motion on the Road

A really nice clip using stop motion to capture the action on the pavement outside the house. The skaters are loose and hit the card bord ramps. It is in the same manner as the earlier stop motion 'Sorry I'm Late' also with a rather urban interpretation of skating. It is really one for the screens though. Nevertheless the tricks are impressing.

Twitter Wave in Honolulu

The tsunami wave, generated by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake of the East coast of Japan on the 11 March 2011, spread through out the pacific threatening many coastal sections in different countries. The water fore strongest hit the Japanese coast shortly after the earthquake. All other countries had a little more time to evacuate and prepare. Hawaii, was one of the next destinations in the line of the wave. The arrival was expected by NOAA, the tsunami warning centre, around 13h17 the same day.

Looking at the activity on twitter during the tsunami we are on the search for clues about the relationship between twitter and an unfolding natural disaster. As an inspiration to serves the XKCD PhD comic 'Seismic Waves'.

In this close look at twitter activity related to the tsunami resulting from the earthquake, Anders Johanson has animated the messages for one hour before and one hour after the expected arrival time of the tsunami wave in Honolulu on Hawaii. The messages are collected through the usual NCL collection method and are focusing on actual geo located tweets that contain lat/long information. Johanson explains "At the time instant when each new tweet is posted, a bright red blob appears on the map, and this blob is then decaying in intensity and size. Re-tweets are shown as an arrow, pointing from the original source of information. Interestingly enough, the information wave has the same direction as the seismic wave. However, there are obviously way too few data points to enable a rigorous spatio-temporal analysis in this case."


IMage by single-blogs for NCL / The graph shows the number of geo located tweets sent per hour from Honolulu, on 2011-03-11, in a radius of 30 km on the day the tsunami resulting from the earlier earthquake in Japan was expected to reach the Hawaiian coast. In white are the overal tweets and in purple the tweets containing the key words wave, tsunami and earthquake or Japan. The first dotted line from the left is the expected arrival time of the wave on the coast of Hawaii at around 13h07 UTC. The second dotted line is the arrival time of the wave on the coast of Mexico.

The tsunami arrived in Hawaii and hit hard, causing damages estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars. On the twitter scape on the other hand, there is a slight increase of activity after the wave, but actually very little. However, as you can note in the graph above there are more tweets using the keywords related to the natural disaster unfolding than there are thereafter, especially after the wave arrived in Mexico.




------
UPDATE 2011-03-18
------

Processing the twitter data some further, the spikes on the keywords do fade out nicely in the hours afterwards. This time we are working with the larger data set containing all the located tweets including the geo located tweets. This data set differs from the one used earlier as that it included reverse geocoded locations, eg places, but not necessarily pure lat/long messages. This set contains some 260'000 messages as compared to some 20'000 geo located in the earlier dataset.

Looking at the event over longer period shows the pattern much clearer. There is a lot more activity around the expected tsunami wave and the dying out of the keywords can be observed in the following hours and days. However it also confirms that to some extend the purely geo located tweets, as a sub set, folow largely the same pattern and are not

Note, there is a baseline tweet containing the term 'wave' that we picked up as part of the collection. This is a weather boy just of Honolulu tweeting the current status of the water, wave and wind.


Image by single-blogs for NCL / The graph shows the number of geo located tweets sent per hour from Honolulu after 2011-03-11, in a radius of 30 km on the day the tsunami resulting from the earlier earthquake in Japan was expected to reach the Hawaiian coast. In white are the overal tweets and in purple the tweets containing the key words wave, tsunami, earthquake or Japan. The first dotted line from the left is the expected arrival time of the wave on the coast of Hawaii at around 13h07 UTC. The second dotted line is the arrival time of the wave on the coast of Mexico.

Water Cycle - What Comes Around Goes Around

Talking cycles and repetition, this is probably the most prominent example everybody remembers from primary school, the water cycle. The rain comes down over the mountains filters through the stone, a spring, a creek, a river, a stream into the ocean, where it is picked up by clouds, ferries to the mountains.

A fairly romantic picture, but definitely a basic diagram explaining connection. Also it servers very well as a starting point for questions. For example for a six year old, why is the water salty in the ocean, but not the rain? How does the water know the way to the ocean? And why are the couds not drifting of to the moon?

This could go on and on developing into a full blown session on earthly systems, but it is all about the basic idea of a systemic concept. It is not about what happens it is more about what happens with it.

So or an ad explaining what a water supplier company does, this is a gold one, back to school.

Sorry I'm late

A lovely timelapse movie on an all too familiar subject, being on time. This involves sometimes quite an effort to make it thought the wilderness of everyday street life scenes and manage the different modes of transport accordingly.

In this story directed by Tomas Mankovsky the guy does quite a number of stunts to get there. Some more details can be fond on the movie page including some making of shots, to the angles right, testing the frame rates and movement of the actors and of course the casting.


Image taken from Sorry-Im-late.com / The story board, simple but precise, see movie. Click for larger version.

Worldwide Twitter Traffic

Twitter communications span the globe and the pinpointing of end locations of conversations in this animation shows how the network spans around the planet. It jumps between the hot spots of cities and even continents.
In the description of the project the authors discuss the rather interesting point of the meaning of 'Location in the case of twitter. In fact this not only applies to twitter but many location based services, the here is not always here. "'Location' has 2 meanings in the world of Twitter. It can mean (1) where someone was when they tweeted provided they are using a GPS-enabled smartphone, or (2) where someone lives (users can specify their home location)." (Geography 970)



In a second version the locations were mapped on a rotating globe which give a good impressionof how we communicate around an axis. For details please see Geography 970.

Drift - Morphing City

The ever changing perspective as we navigate the urban landscape is an important feature influencing the perception and in many ways influences how the space we create as we go along are experienced. It's not as if the street is existing, but it is renewed every time as a recreation of itself with a specific take.

Buildings feature in this process consciously as a back drop and the immediate focus is put on the objects whizzing about, to avoid potential collisions. The trajectories of these has to be continuously monitored and one's own path adjusted accordingly. It is a sort of negotiation between the elements that make use of their power to take decisions and with it continuously generate situations.

However, this consuming activity might in the long run is not be the main focus. Unconsciously the main focus might lay on the static frame and the defining elements as parameters of the room for action.

In this beautiful time lapse Theo Tagholm shows an interpretation of this spatiality of places from the perspective of one subject.

As it says in the description "I drift, half awake, half asleep. Moving through the city I recall but have never been to."
The clip is produced by Theo Tagholm, a video artist. He's got some other great video work. As linked here earlier with the clip Still Moving.

Light Painting

It has featured widely across the web and been picked up by many blogs, but it is still worth publishing because the work is so awesome. It is once more work developed and realised by Berg and Dentsu London with Timo Arnall, the same guys who ruled the internet with the RFID work last year. For example the digital version of 'Der Lauf der Dinge' by the artist duo Fischli Weiss in the clip Nearness.

Now they are working with iPads and create stunning light paintings of hovering 3D writings and small objects. The project is called the 'Making Future Magic'.It is a sort of manual-digital creation process that involves digital 3D development of objects but also the manual movement of the iPad by individuals. For me this merging of techniques makes the result the more special, enjoy!

SnowDay

A winterday as one is dreaming of. Winter holiday in Lenzerheide, Switzerland.
This clip was shot with an iPhone 3GS using timeLapse and edited in Quick Time. Music by Ceilí Moss 'Ship of Fools' on mp3unsigned.com.
It isn't really the season for this kind of activity, but it is sort of a teaser for the coming winter month that will hopefully be as beautiful as it was last year.

Tweet Times - Activity Over 24 Hours in Munich

The twitter activity varies over the course of the day as shown in an earlier post on Tweet Times. So far we were using the timeRose to visualise the temporal activity.
The data used here is based on the geo located tweets collected for the New City Landscape maps of New York, Paris, London and Munich. I have now produced a simple contour for each hour of the day. This shows the activity over the period of 24 hours, with all days superimposed. This visualisation only looks at the data collected for Munich. The detailed New City Landscape map of Munich can be found HERE. In Munich there are some hotspots that are constantly active over the course of the day, like the airport terminals in the top right hand corner and of course the centre. Then there is a lot of fluctuation around the center and ocasional spots on the outskirts. For orientation purpose I have put in major green features and the water line.

City Groove - Tokyo

Tokyo the dense city with the many lights, buzzing streets and total anonymity in the crowd. Or as here the beautiful place, sitting in context between speed rail and the colour changing sky.

Produced by Stefan Werc on a Canon 7D, music, Broadcast 2000 "get up and go" broadcast2000.co.uk

Get up and go from Stefan Werc on Vimeo.

Logo City

The city built from logos by the french artist collaborative H5. The short with the title “Logorama” is entirely put together using familiar brand logos to represen the different elements of the city and you have the pringels man dring a truck past or the familiar Malibu Palms along the road or the windows live butterflies whizzing by.





Found vie urbanophil
17min version to be seen at urbanshit.de

Massive's City

A city vision born from darkness with references to a long line of classics, from Metropolis to Blade Runner. Massive Attack have pushed the boundaries in a number of areas and have always tried to reach beyond simply making music. This would usually also include political and social topics. We all very well remember their impressive live performances.
This new clip is a impressive flight-through a city, frozen in the moment of battle and disaster. It is a curious moment, developing along the camera path, despite being a framed moment in time. Director Eduard Salier is well known for his music videos and the long list of bands he worked with includes beside Massive Attack, Orishas and Air, or comercials for Nike or O2.
The city created also has references to Guernica, the famous Picasso Painting, depicting the Spanish Civil War. In this light I believe there is less litteral meaning to the animal featured in the clip and more a hint at the current war on urban streets in general. The urban battlefield is probably part of the Massiv Attack story since the beginning.


Image taken from massiveattackarea by Eduard Salier / Storie board for the video clip to Splitting the Atom by Massive Attack



Read the interview with the director Eduardo Salier at Pitchfork.

The Simpsons Have a GPS

This is something one could predict from the start. They hade to bring this joke into the Simpsons TV series and now they have, or better had, a GPS navigation system for their car. And yes driving the kids to school is quit difficult and definitely requires a friendly assistant's voice to guide one through the horrible traffic on the streets of Springfield. I particularly like the line "decrease elevation ten feet, then turn left!" Funny enough the GPS is capable of switching between imperial and metric system on the fly, not bad!


Found via MapRoom, GPStracklog, waze at gawker.

And by the way, TomTom offers a Homer Simpson voice over for your own inCar navigation system. Just make sure you don't get distracted by it and swirl off across a building site. Also don't forget to bring the calculator for the conversion on the fly.
Visit www.tomtom.com/simpsons, the voice skin is available to download now for £7.95 or 9.95 euros. A snipet can be heard here:

NY Invasion - Pixels Everywhere

Once more a pixel invasion on New York. Of course with the usual familiar faces but there is more. Like a virus the little cubes spread out and in the end it is balls to cubes.
"New York invasion by 8-bits creatures! PIXELS is Patrick Jean' latest short film, shot on location in New York."
Written, directed by : Patrick Jean, Director of Photograhy : Matias Boucard
See a full version at oneMoreProduction.

Photograph the Earth from Every Angle and Every Altitude

The Google Earth Guys are back! You for sure remember their hilarious trip around the planet in their car to 'Street View' the roads of our world. The guys are created by Dan Meth and College Humor has brought us the great conversations Evan and Mike have while driving. Now they are back with a new journey for the two hard working, company dedicated employees. Of course the animation uses Google Earth imagery, off you go:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Space Flight and Clouds of Tweets

The recent Twitter data for one London Weekend has been re-rendered as a clip by DigitalUrban. Earlier version can be found HERE.
It is the same data with 60,000 geo referenced Tweets in London over a weekend from Friday evening to Monday morning. This visual is now also using the new navigation tool, the 3D Connextion 'Space Navigator', a pretty awesome tool for navigation in Google Earth for example.



CLip by DigitalUrban and Music - 'Social Awkwardness' by Xanthe over on unsigned bands.

Google Street View TimeLapse

Driving around Paris from you comfy chair is obviously possible nowadays using Google Street View. You can zoom along the road.
Video by coprod.fr, music Phoenix - Liztomania

Google Street View challenge /2009 from CorentinZ on Vimeo.

Ambient Life

If live would be as smooth as this clip is in design terms coherent, would it still be fun. Nevertheless this is great stuff.

Freeband - The Ambient Life from The QBF on Vimeo.

Found through Digitale Schweinshaxe

The Origine of Mass

Space and the creation of, has occupied lately a lot of space on the blog. For the approaching weekend a fascinating clip that throws up an extended question ‘the origin of mass’ after the Higgs Boson particle which is expected to provide a scientific foundation for the origin of mass in the universe. For it find this clip really suitable. For not to say I love it.
Aleksandar Rodic created the clip for his animation class at Savannah College of Art and Design.

The Origin of Mass from Aleksandar Rodic on Vimeo.