Culture as Information made Visual by Line Graphs

That may be the title of my next thesis. I have been pondering the intersections of history, perception, information, visual culture, and the recent explosions in the availability of not only contemporary data/information, but also historical imagery (a post about the recently-expanded/revamped Library of Congress Digital Collections shall be forthcoming; honestly, I was perusing their archives yesterday, and I am astounded by how much it had grown since the last time I looked at it, which was only a few weeks ago. Nice work, gubmint!).

That said, there are some really interesting possibilities for the study of contemporary history (I know, kind of an odd phrase) being opened up by tools like Google Insights. I suppose there are serious concerns about bias inherent in using such methods to make assumptions about cultural trends (your results are defined by those who use Google, for starters) but it still some nice fodder for provoking thought.

David McCandless over at informationisbeautiful.net was doing some investigations on this front, showing the possibility to make evident at least a sliver of the zeitgeist that would otherwise pass mostly unnoticed just below the surface of social discourse:

Every April and November the issue flares up. Why?

April 20th is the anniversary of the Columbine Massacre. Though dimishing, the echoes of that event still reverberate through the group mind.

Not sure about the November peak? Maybe because Christmas video games are announced?

The Relative Trustworthiness of Beards

Your guide to creeps. As one unable to grow a beard, I tend not to trust anyone with facial hair. But that's just because I am jealous of them. If I could, I would grow the "unkempt beard" (aka "homeless beard"), putting me somewhere between "unsavory" and "threatening" on the beardometer. And that would be the impression I wanted to convey. The more I think about it, the harder it is to project "unsavory" without facial hair. My brother tends to rock the "Colonel Sanders", thus rendering him neutral. My favorite though is the pencil-thin chinstrap. Gross.
designed by Matt McInerney (aka pixelspread.com), via informationisbeautiful.

Star Wars Uncut

Who would've thought that there was all kinds of stuff about Star Wars on the internet? There are even whole websites devoted entirely to Star Wars stuff!

Anyway, the Star Wars Uncut project is nearing completion. Here is a piece of the finished product: the scene in which Obi Wan is killed, Luke, Han, etc., escape from the Death Star, and then Luke and Han shoot some tie fighters! Awesome:

Star Wars Uncut "The Escape" from Casey Pugh on Vimeo.

They say the entire movie will be shown at the CPH:PIX Festival April 19 in Copenhagen, and its true.

Infrastructure! In 1930s Tokyo!

From the Visualizing Cultures Department at MIT:

The VC mission is to use new technology and hitherto largely inaccessible visual materials to reconstruct the past as people of the time visualized the world (or imagined it to be).

Among other amazing imagery, the site has 100 woodblock prints by Koizumi Kishio depicting Tokyo's transition to modernity:

“100 Views of Great Tokyo in the Shōwa Era,” a series of woodblock prints produced between 1928 and 1940 by Koizumi Kishio, explore the rebirth of Tokyo in the years following the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923. Koizumi’s prints depict the transformation of an important Asian city as it embraced modernity, maintained traditions, and became the site of ultimately disastrous political policies. In addition, Koizumi was a member of a new, modern printmaking movement in Japan known as sōsaku-hanga or “creative printmaking.”