Christian Marc Schmidt has been working on the means to display social networking activity in a map interface, and has recently launched both a Mac and Windows desktop client called Invisible Cities that can display feeds from sites such as Twitter and Flickr in both real time and in aggregate. The immersive three-dimensional visualization morphs the topology of a city based on areas of activity with peaks and valleys depending on where social networking conversations are taking place. Data points are connected in chronological order by paths representing themes extracted from status updates and image metadata.
“Invisible Cities maps information from one realm—online social networks—to another: an immersive, three dimensional space. In doing so, the piece creates a parallel experience to the physical urban environment. The interplay between the aggregate and the real-time recreates the kind of dynamics present within the physical world, where the city is both a vessel for and a product of human activity. It is ultimately a parallel city of intersections, discovery, and memory, and a medium for experiencing the physical environment anew.”
View this video for a sense of the interface and data visualization capabilities.
