Earlier this year, digital artist Jer Thorp used the New York Times Article Search API to create visual displays exploring the areas of focus and interconnection found in articles. The Flickr sets posted by Thorp map changes in coverage over the course of time for narrow topics or keywords, or depict a broader range of themes over a shorter period of time, such as the relationships between key terms during a single year.
The most striking displays juxtapose two themes, diagramming their mutual waxing and waning through the years. The image above--showing relative references to hope and crisis since 1981, the pairing of regulation and innovation or socialism and capitalism provide visual histories of changes ...
categorized as Visualization, news.
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Call for Volunteers
- We're looking for a volunteer community manager to do some pretty fun 'public good from sharing research' projects. Paid in credit, resources and small stipends if needed.
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Please contact us at apply@creativesynthesis.net if you're interested.
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Meet the Collaboratives
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Carnival of the Animals
Our perception of animals has changed dramatically over the last century. The decline of agriculture and the expansion of the middle class have brought a view of animals that ranges ...
Evolving Art
To mark the bicentennial of Darwin's birth and the sesquicentennial of On the Origin of Species, an exhibit opening today at Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum explores the effects of his ...
Finding the Rhyme in Education Policy
In its search to bolster the faltering public school system, California has given new life to a quote attributed (with some variations) to Mark Twain: "History doesn't repeat itself, but ...
A Self-Powered Sentinel
Massachusetts-based Voltree Power is currently developing a network of sensor nodes that will monitor forest conditions and immediately alert users to wildfires. The system, the Early Wildfire ...
Memorial Map
Sean Askay, a geospatial content developer for Google Earth Outreach, created Map the Fallen as a tribute to US personnel who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq ...
Aging in Community
A recent article by Christine Schneider explores the ways in which the intentional community Damanhur offers members a model of education and social life that synthesizes the experiences ...
Method of Modern Love
A project developed by Scottish think tank Distance Lab gives partners a tool for exploring art, intimacy, and the body's relation to space. The interactive installation Mutsugoto rigs ...
Machine Shoe
Ten Bhomer’s ‘Rotational Moulded Shoe’ is an anti-craft exploration that seeks to replace the manual ...
Alternative Currency
A pilot program in some European Union cities encourages residents to explore the connection between personal actions and carbon emissions while rewarding those who make sustainable choices. The NU currency ...
The 2400-Hour Monument
This summer, British installation artist Antony Gormley will orchestrate a popular (in the original sense of the word) evolving work that explores identity and the idea of commemoration in ...
Solstice to Solstice
NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day recently featured an amazing image by photographer Justin Quinnell. Relying on a homemade pinhole camera, Quinnell used a six-month exposure ...