01 loading data
I’ve always been intrigued by art generated by data, the massive scale, the repetition, and the seemingly related patterns. In my first semester at ITP, I’ve worked on a data visualization project about showing the real-time status of NYC subway. The original goal was ambitious, my partner and I wanted to make a useful tool for subway commuters to look up alternative transportation when train delay was inevitable. Today, I’m still mesmerized by watching the moving dots, representing each train’s location, on the map.
For the first class of Data Art, we are asked to visualize the dataset which contains the numbers of foreign-born population of the entire US. I decide to use a simple JavaScript charting tool, Chart.js, which can be easily integrated with p5.js. The result looks like below.
First, I make an array and then push the data into the array. Next, it’s time to visually represent it using Chart.js when the data is prepared. The Chart.js part is fairly easy. I just follow some of the samples and find the stacked line chart representing the data well. While researching the data visualization tools, I also stumble upon Google Charts, which seems easy to display data in a rich and interactive way.
Finally, here’s the link to my visualization of the foreign-born population: http://sayhellotoalan.co/others/data-art/stacked-line/