Visualizing the online response to London 2012
emoto was a data art project visualising the online response to the Olympics London 2012. Alongside Drew Hemment and Studio NAND, I had the creative lead in producing a real-time sentiment visualization web application, data journalistic analysis of the Games as well as a physical interactive data sculpture.
Real-time sentiment visualization
During the Games, we visualized the emotional online response in real-time in a web-based interactive application. Our custom infrastructure consumed the Twitter Streaming API, looking for tweets related to the Olympics and categorized these into sentiment categories (from "happy" to "angry" or "sad" messages). In addition, we detected topics of interest such as disciplines, athletes, nationalities, etc., so in the end we ended up with a real-time sentiment profile for topics relevant to the games.
These sentiment profiles were visualized based on a unique origami-like visualization form, allowing easy comparison of how popular or controversial different topics were at a given time. In addition, incoming tweets were visualized in a stream-like message view, featuring an "inverse parallax" effect, where bigger ("more important") tweets would float more slowly on top, while less cited or referred to tweets were flying by faster in the background.
Story-fishing
As a complement to the fast-moving, ever-changing real-time popularity contest, we investigated various individual stories, such as the reception of the opening ceremony in the US and the UK, or the sentiment development of individual topics on the opening weekend.
In this context, we developed a chart type we called "sentigraph", which encodes sentiment in color and vertical position of a line, and at the same time the number of messages in line strength — it proved to be highly effective. Of course, in the end, we used it to try and to summarize the audience reponse to the games in one l-o-o-o-o-ng timeline.
Data sculpture
In many ways the crowning piece of the project, and a conceptual counterpoint to the ephemeral web activities, our data sculpture preserved the more than 12 million tweets in physical form. We had 17 plates CNC-milled — one for each day of the games — with a relief heatmap indicating the emotional highs and lows of each day. Overlay projections highlighted individual stories, and visitors could scroll through the most retweeted tweets per hour for each story using a control knob.
The tweets and topics displayed in the installation can be investigated in interactive heatmaps. Rollover the rows to see a tooltip display of the most retweeted tweet on the given topic at the respective point in time.
More resources
Full credits
Created by Moritz Stefaner, Drew Hemment, Studio NAND.
A FutureEverything project for London 2012 Festival and the Cultural Olympiad programme. Funded by Arts Council England and WE PLAY/Legacy Trust UK.
Infrastructure design & development by Gerrit Kaiser.
Citizen journalism by Andy Miah.
Evaluation and blogging by Ege Sezen.
Project management by Leon Seth and Nick Lawrenson.
Communications by Jo Williams, Anita Morris Associates.
Emoto is produced by FutureEverything and Studio NAND.
Sentiment Analysis Partner: Lexalytics
Manufacturing Partner: Tischlerei Bächer
A FutureEverything project for London 2012 Festival and the Cultural Olympiad programme. Funded by Arts Council England and WE PLAY/Legacy Trust UK.
Infrastructure design & development by Gerrit Kaiser.
Citizen journalism by Andy Miah.
Evaluation and blogging by Ege Sezen.
Project management by Leon Seth and Nick Lawrenson.
Communications by Jo Williams, Anita Morris Associates.
Emoto is produced by FutureEverything and Studio NAND.
Sentiment Analysis Partner: Lexalytics
Manufacturing Partner: Tischlerei Bächer