Are we feeling fine?

The gap between practical and scientific social data visualization

2011 This assignment was written for school purpose. University of Utrecht // Faculty of Humanities Degree/program // MA New Media & Digital Culture Course // Get Real! Student Salko Joost Kattenberg // 3614875 Paper // Are we feeling fine? The gap between practical and scientific social data visualization Supervisor Ann-Sophie Lehman // www.ann-sophielehmann.nl 2

Complexity is a perceived quality that comes from the difficulty in understanding or describing many layers of inter-related parts (Benjamin Jotham Fry, 2000)

We Feel Fine, www.wefeelfine.com

Abstract
In this paper I will address the notion of using social (online) data in data visualizations. How should we use or address social data? To do this, I critically look into the process of making and understanding social data visualizations. Using the case of We Feel Fine, an social data visualization, I reflect upon the practical approach of designing data visualizations and confront that with the critical scientific approach of designing data visualizations. I do this in order to establish important aspects of social data visualizations that should be taken into account when making data visualizations. Keywords: visualization, social data, design, dynamic data visualizations, making, science, practice

Introduction
Over the last ten years we have seen an increasingly amount of data visualizations: from infographics explaining news topics in the daily newspaper to Facebook applications visualizing your social network. But the increasing amount of data visualizations is perhaps not the greatest change, while looking at the development over the past ten years. Data visualizations have transformed from plain statistic graphs and images to interactive mind blowing graphical designs. Doing so, some data visualizations are opening up new aesthetics and are venturing into hybrid appearances between data visualizations and art (see image). Besides their appearance, they are also changing in complexity. High-tech computers and algorithms are visualizing huge datasets that are consisting over more than millions of entries. Things that were not possible ten years ago. The increase of data in the digital 21st century comes along with new technology and techniques. Yet, this is not a mere increase of data but also a change in the sort of data. The emergence of social media in the middle of 2000s created opportunities to study social and cultural processes and dynamics in new ways. (Lev Manovich, 2011. pp.2). The fact that we now can use new social and cultural data means we can now use these data to create social/cultural data visualizations. This is completely new phenomena in data visualizations and perhaps even a completely new form of data in itself, and therefore comes with its own new/interesting challenges. With the change in aesthetics, technology and content researchers find themselves questioning and hoping to understand these new sometimes hybrid data visualizations.
Chad Hagen, Nonsensical Infographics. www.chadhagen.com

In this paper I will analyze one particular case that uses these new social online data. By using this case I will try to formulate important aspects and problems that occur when making/using these new data visualizations. This means that the other new aspects of data visualizations like; new aesthetics, complex algorithms and high-tech technology will be less present in this paper. This does not mean that these aspects of data visualizations are less important in making and using data visualizations. Therefore I will try to refer back to these topics in this paper when their importance or involvement becomes relevant for our understanding of social data visualizations. Besides the various aspects of social data visualizations one cannot forget the involvement and choices of the maker. Makers of data visualizations are designers, programmers, scientists and perhaps even artists. Most of the makers of data visualizations do not have a scientific background. Out of my own experience I can see that most makers of data visualizations therefore do not address data visualization from a scientific perspective. This does not mean that a practical approach therefore produces bad data visualizations. Perhaps one can even say that it are the data visualizations form a practical approach that are most praised and common in daily life. In this paper I will confront the scientific and practical approaches of data visualizations. I do this because I believe that both sides could benefit and learn from each others approaches. In the future this will become more and more important, looking at the increasing amount of data and the rise in the use of data visualizations. Next to that, there is an increasing amount of open software and tools like Many Eyes, Tableau, Gephi and Processing, making data visualizations available for a much wider public. Educating them to better address and make better data visualizations will perhaps prove to be a challenge for as well a practical and scientific point of view.

Interactive data visualization of fireworks emissions, Own design. 2009.

We feel fine
About the project In the introduction I already mentioned that I will be using one specific case in this paper. This case is the social data visualization We Feel Fine, launched in 2006 by Jonathan Harris and Sepandar D. Kamvar. We Feel Fine is a data visualization that aims to collect the worlds emotions to help people better understand themselves and others (Harris & Kamvar, 2011. pp.1). The dynamic data visualization scrapes sentences from LiveJournal, MSN Spaces, MySpace, Blogger, Flickr, Technorati, Feedster, Ice Rocket, and Google with the occurrences of the phrases I feel and I am feeling every 5 minutes. The result is a database of several million feelings, increasing by 10,000 -15,000 new feelings per day. (Harris & Kamvar, 2011. pp.1). The data visualization is really beautiful and became a big hit. We Feel Fine has been used as an interactive installation and has been exhibited in museums all over the world, next to the We Feel Fine is also freely available online1. This means that over the course of 2006 until 2011 We Feel Fine has been used by around 8,5 million visitors (Harris & Kamvar, 2011. pp.1). The data used in We Feel Fine belongs to the social new data, coming from digital social and cultural processes available on the internet. In the same named book We Feel Fine published in 2009 by Harris and Kamvar they write about how they came to the idea of working with this kind of data: They (Harris and Kamvar) noticed people were starting to trade their dairies for blogs, their scrapbooks for online photo albums, and their real-world conversations for online chat and email, causing a flood of human self-expression to pour onto the internet, with millions of people leaving behind digital footprints (Harris & Kamvar, 2009. pp.cover) The book shows how they scrape and deal with these online digital footprints of people, and even printed some pages were some of the source code of the We Feel Fine data visualization is displayed (page 234,235). So the book itself is very clear on where the data is coming from. The actual first 2 pages after the books introduction is called Harvesting Feelings and describes the whole process of scraping data form online journals and blogs in six steps. Also in Harris and Kamvars written paper from 2011, 2 years after the books release, also devotes many attention to the way they use and gather data. It seems that next to the sentence they also try to scrape other information regarding the person who most possibly wrote the sentence. For each entry, We Feel Fine attemps to find the authors age, gender, and geographic location. It also tries to find the local weather conditions
Contents from We Feel Fine, www.wefeelfine.com.

1www.wefeelfine.com

at the time of the post (Harris & Kamvar, 2009. pp.19). Next to that they try to find an image that was also posted along with the sentence. Although this perhaps sounds a bit shallow, this is not true when using We Feel Fine. The data visualization really creates beautiful wordplay and stunning interaction with the visuals. The simple combination of an emotional/expressionistic sentence with a picture creates a charged expression and often calls for empathy. In fact, this can be seen as the core element of the whole data visualization. This is perfectly shown in the books 288 pages, where far more than the half of the book consists of images and their related sentences. In the book these images have been divided between countless different feelings and numerous locations. It is not without reason that the book is called We Feel Fine: An Almanac of Human Emotion. About the data visualization The data visualization itself uses no static but mostly dynamic data visualization techniques. While de backend (database) is updated every 5 minutes the frontend (users interface) is dynamically written to cope with the ever changing and altering dataset. This means that there are numerous ways in which the user of the data visualization can adjust the data that is used, and can even switch between different interfaces. In total there are 6 different interfaces in which the data is displayed differently. In short I will explain these different modes of the data visualization. Madness. In this interface every sentence is represented by a tiny color coded dot that bounces across the screen. When clicking a dot the sentence (and if possible the photo) is revealed at the top of the screen. Murmurs. This interface shows a timeline of all the recent feelings. Every dot reveals its sentence in order of time (beginning with the most recent sentence). Montage. This shows a large array of little photos. When clicked the photo is viewed full size and the sentence is revealed. Mobs. Mobs is displayed as a more regular data visualization. Different categories and selections can be made to compared and analyze the data, each giving a clear overview of the different data surrounding the entry not the sentence itself. Mobs is however focused on all the data (mobs). Metrics. This interface serves the same goal as mobs but then only for the most salient feelings and entries. Mounds. Mounds always shows all the feelings currently in the database and sorts then in big piles on the horizontal axes. By clicking a pile you directly open the Madness interface regarding that particular feeling. 7

Contents from We Feel Fine, www.wefeelfine.com.

There is one ever present interface element called The panel in the top of the view which controls the way in which you can slice and categorize the data. You can click on the bar and reveal a screen where you can make a selection based upon: Feeling (happy, sad, depressed, etc.) Age (in ten year increments - 20s, 30s, etc.) Gender (male or female) Weather (sunny, cloudy, rainy, or snowy) Location (country, state, and/or city) Date (year, month, and/or day)

This means that you can for instance use the Montage interface to show photos of happy feelings coming from 20-29 year old males in Utrecht, Netherlands in 2011 (which results in zero). You get an idea now that We Feel Fine creates many possibilities to show/retrieve data form the visualization. I would almost say that We Feel Fine causes for a very active state of mind or even a playful state of mind, giving the player a feeling of discovery and sensation.

The process of making

The process of making data visualizations is a complex process. Unique algorithms work to gather and represent data. The programmed algorithms works hand in hand with complex graphical designs and together create unpredictable outcomes. This is exactly the case in We Feel Fine, where programming, design and data together form an integrate solution in the form of a social data visualization. However, overall the processes of making data visualizations can be divided into three different stages: the gathering of data, the designing of the data visualization, and the use or viewer/user interpretation. These stages come along with many different facets and operations, all of them important for our understanding and analyses of data visualizations. In my research I have found that every stage relates to many different smaller processes, making the whole process of analyzing them very complex. Most articles I found therefore focus on one or perhaps two stages of the process of making. We Feel Fine entails all three stages in the process of making because its a finished design, therefore I chose to include all three stages into this article. I did this because I feel that in every stage there are fundamental differences in the approach to data visualizations from either a practical or scientific, and that this is extra visible in the use of new social or cultural data.

Contents from We Feel Fine, www.wefeelfine.com.

Database designs
The first stage is the one were the social data is gathered. We Feel Fine relies on its dataset and therefore confines the data visualization within that chosen frame of data. The dataset determines the outcome of the data visualizations as much as the choices in the design of We Feel Fine, and ultimately also confines the interpretations of its user/viewer. The social data used in We Feel Fine is a new kind of data. Never before had we the opportunity to gather social data. For the first time, we can follow imaginations, opinions, ideas, and feelings of hundreds of millions of people (Manovich, 2011. pp.2). But this new exciting social data also comes with its downsides. Manovich writes about these problems in his paper Trending: The Promises and the Challenges of Big Social Data. Manovich addresses a couple of problems that have an effect on the way we gather and use these new social data. He writes that choosing a data sample has become much more important due to the immense size of social data. While before we could only use data from a few (deep data) to explain the overall state, we can now use large quantities of data (surface data) to do the same. Manovich writes that he sees that both methods are used in either humanities or hard science (mostly in statistics and mathematics). But this has changed writes Manovich: We no longer have to choose between data size and data depth. We can study exact trajectories formed by billions of cultural expressions, experiences, texts, and links (Manovich, 2011. pp. 3) He sees a new form, a way of analyzing great quantities but still be able to dig deep enough into different samples to explain the overall state, effectively using both methods of deep and surface data at once. When looking back to We Feel Fine, we can now wonder what kind of data is gathered and how this data is then used. At first glance you might think that we cant speak of deep data in the case of We Feel Fine, having a database containing several million entries based on sentences coming forms blogs and other posts. But remember Manovich, we can have both! If we look closer (dig deeper), there appears to be some form of deep data, because you are able to sample very specific moments and places. This reminded me to some pages in the book of Harris and Kamvar that contained not images but other findings. One specific page is called Feeling the Calander and the Clock and displays the course of 2 or 3 feelings over a couple of days (Harris & Kamvar, 2009. pp.260). By taking some major events like Obamas Election Day, Valentines Day and New Years we see an increase or decrease in some feelings that were expressed online during that time. For instance, the appearance of depression increases fourfold on New Years Eve.
Contents from We Feel Fine, www.wefeelfine.com.

But is this really the deep anthropological data we are used to? Anthropology very much relies on the quality of the data and participant-observation. When we look at We Feel Fine from this perspective, nothing seems to be left of the deepness of the data. This comes because this data is not gathered by the makers, but algorithms gather the data for them. Here the margins for errors or misinterpretation are greater and can ruin the entire research or visualization. Nor online, in their paper or in the book there is any mention of a manual checking of the entries, or a sarcasm tracing algorithm for instance. Therefore We Feel Fine is very distant to the source of data, something we are not used to in the humanities. But does that mean that the data is therefore incorrect? Christine Paul writes about the use of databases and storage of data in her paper The Database as System and Cultural Form. She writes that even the way we store data and design data models already imply some kind of narrative, patterns or structures within the data. This would mean that the structures and storing of data in databases already in some way form data. The understanding of a database as the underlying principle and structure of any new media object delineates a broad field that includes anything from a network such as the Internet (as one gigantic database) to a particular data set (Paul, 2007. pp.5). Applying this concept to We Feel Fine we indeed see that this is true. If the makers would not have chosen age, location, gender and time to sort or categorize the sentences we would probably come up with different findings and different results. This implies a much greater and far more important aspect of designing database structures and gathering data. Anthropologist can stumble upon findings that lie outside certain key elements or structures; this is because(s)he does not constrain his source or data (the human subject) to any categories or structure. Where in a database structure we indeed do that, structuralize data and make taxonomies, constraining the data that we use. To make matters worse I refer to the text of Duncan Watts et al.: Identity and Search in Social Networks. They discuss the underlying data structures of social media. With these analyses they reveal that there are already patterns within social media that afford us to view and gather data is some way. Looking at these patterns they address the relationship with for instance non-digital social structures and find interesting ways to make algorithms to correctly gather data from social media. It seems that our online social activity is already confined by underlying data structures. Does that mean that these new social data can never escape being constraint? And are therefore, from a scientific perspective, always less than the traditional anthropological data? It certainly seems that way. But is seems that the 8,5 million users of We Feel Fine did not seems to bother.
Contents from We Feel Fine, www.wefeelfine.com.

10

Designing data
The second stage of the process of making social data visualizations is the actual programming and designing of visualizations. This stage will determine how the data visualization will be presented to the viewer/user. Here we see that basic design concepts of style, form, color and shape are important for our understanding and interpretation of data visualizations. We Feel Fine for instance uses a large variety of colors to be able to distinguish between different feelings. We Feel Fine also uses basic shapes in many of their interfaces in order to represent sentences. But these basic concepts are not so basic anymore. Interaction design opens up the possibilities of user interaction, making the basic design strategies far more complex and much more elaborate than before. Data visualizations are not just static images or graphs these days, they have become interactive graphical designs which are opening up new aesthetics and cultural expression. It is in the possibility to transform and represent data that scientific methods and practice very much differ. Design concepts Monovich writes about two district designing techniques in his paper What is Visualization?, which are both used in We Feel Fine. The first is reduction: the process of using samples of data in reduced design forms in order to clearly represent complex structures. In We Feel Fine that is for instance the dots which are used in the Madness interface, which reduce the information regarding one sentence to a single dot of color. For Monovich reduction is an element of design that is very important for our understanding and perception of data visualizations. By choosing different forms or shapes we are designing and situating taxonomies just like I wrote previously about database structures. The second is spatiality: They all use spatial variables (position, size, shape, and more recently curvature of lines and movement) to represent key differences in the data and reveal most important patterns and relations (Manovich, 2010. pp. 7). While spatiality also implies some forms of taxonomies, spatiality is more used for showing relationship between different data and therefore guides/helps our interpretation of data. This is clearly visible in the Mounds interface of We Feel Fine where the size and position both act as the recognition of big feelings and small feelings. Reduction and spatiality are not always used to analyze data. Jeremy Douglass is a researcher working with Manovich who gatherers and analyzes gameplay data. Here he uses techniques like motion tracking and RGB level analysis and newly developed technique called eigenmodes to visually analyze the gameplay data. So we see that common techniques are not the only ones, using other techniques will lead to other representations of data and will therefore open
Contents from We Feel Fine, www.wefeelfine.com.

11

up different categories (taxonomies) of data; which can lead to new insights and analyses of the data itself. Dynamics and interaction I already wrote in the introduction of this chapter that interaction and dynamics are changing our use and making of data visualizations. Interaction is extending the possibilities for analyzing data within data visualizations; this in turn could expand our understanding of data. Looking at the first stage of making we have seen how database design could lead to a constraint on data. Previously static data visualizations, like infographics, also confined the viewer of these data visualizations. Not only the using a specific dataset, also by confining the user to one particular design/shape that the data is in. They could not search further into the data, reveal extra information or transforms data into new designs. By adding interaction to data visualization this had become possible. We Feel Fine uses interaction to manage this. The Panel interface lets the user adjust the current dataset that is being used, besides from that are multiple interfaces to review the data form different perspectives. Although they still confine the user in some way, we are freer to analyze and explore the data in more than one way. In practice this is very hard thing to do. Benjamin Jotham Fry writes about dynamic and interactive data visualizations. With the use of motion and interactive techniques comes a whole new array of possibilities to represent, analyze and design data according to Fry. In his thesis, Organic Information Design, he tries to answer questions like: How can a continually changing structure be represented? (Fry, 2000 pp. 13). This is exactly what We Feel Fine is, a structure that changes (updates) every 5 minutes and can also be constantly changed at the will of the user. In his thesis Fry constructs his concept of organic information visualization: An Organic Information Visualization provides a means for viewers to engage in an active deconstruction of a data set (Fry, 2000 pp. 16). In other words, Fry searches for means in which complex and interactive data can be best presented in such a way that users can easily deconstruct/analyze the data. But by the end of his thesis, Fry formulates three guidelines or rules how to make dynamic and interactive data visualizations. Structureit is essential to construct these systems in ways that will cause the individual parts to aggregate together. () Appearancethese are complicated systems, and it is easy (and therefore tempting) to make them very beautiful in their complications. . This is a weak exercise, however, because one can take the simplest thing and make it needlessly complicated but beautiful. () Movementit is important to avoid extraneous movement in the composition that is not related to the task at hand. (Fry, 2000 pp.87/88).
Contents from We Feel Fine, www.wefeelfine.com.

12

Looking at We Feel Fine from Frys perspective is interesting. Structurally individual parts does no really aggregate, but is maybe less applicable in what We Feel Fine wants to represent (individual image-sentence relation). Looking at appearance, we see (mostly in the book) very complex visuals. I for one used the extra explanations on the website/paper to figure out the real underlying data structure and function of some things. Movement in We Feel Fine, especially the Madness interface, is everything what Fry does not want to see. So looking from Frys perspective we see an flawed data visualization. Here we must not forget that Fry is a Media Arts and Science graduate while writing his thesis and that the whole paper was published by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Although Fry is experimenting with data visualization and has a very practical approach in his thesis, he still writes from a scientific point of view. In science it is far more important that data is correctly represented so scientists and researchers can draw the right conclusions from data visualizations. We Feel Fine aims to collect the worlds emotions to help people better understand themselves and others (Harris & Kamvar, 2011. pp.1). That can hardly be called an approach to ensure that researchers can draw the right conclusion. So maybe it is not that wrong that We Feel Fine incorporates extraneous movements, makes beautiful but needlessly overcomplicated visuals and that sometimes it appears that we are only looking at randomized structures of data. So what? Its more about our feelings and perception than the actual data, right? Well, why does the book then show pages of data formulated in complex designs? Why do they try do present deep data when there is no need for it in their project statement. Here we clearly see that the practice and the scientific approach of data collide and we are left wondering what the best method is. I will come back to this in the conclusion of this paper.

Contents from We Feel Fine, www.wefeelfine.com.

13

Interpretation of the viewer/user

The third and final stage is the process of interpretation and understanding of data visualizations. You can make beautiful datasets and design he most elegant esthetics but if everyone interprets you data visualization wrong, you still end up with nothing. Interpretation is hard to predict and is very subjective to the individual. Because it is very subjective it is also hard to research or to analyze. In this chapter I will therefore look at the way we want to understand and interpret data from a practical or scientific perspective. Here again, we see differences. If we want to begin to say something about our interpretation, we have to know why we need data visualizations as humans. Why do we visualize data, whats our benefit? Fry shortly addresses this in his thesis, and looks how humans interpret data visualizations: Because of the accuracy and speed with which the human visual system works, graphic representations make it possible for large amounts of information to be displayed in a small space (Fry, 2000. pp. 14). It seems that we are very fast at seeing complex graphics. Manovich talks about seeing and discovering patterns and relations in data visualizations. In our experience, practically every time we analyze and then visualize a new image video collection, or even a single time-based media artifact (a music video, a feature film, a video recording of a game play), we find some surprising new patterns. (Manovich, 2011. pp. 8). So these relations and patterns can be seen as new insights, new information gathered by the clever use of visualizing data. I myself always use the sentence: Making the invisible visible. For me a data visualization must have the potential to reveal coherence, relations, patterns and comparison between different samples of data, thereby revealing/allowing new insight to be formed or analyzed. Frys, Manovichs and my idea of what a data visualization must do/does with human interpretation, all do not include help people better understand themselves, what the project statement of We Feel Fine is. Jasper Schelling formulates his opinion differently: They (data visualizations) derive their strength from the fact that they let people use their eyes and minds to draw their own conclusions rather than explicitly state a fact. (Schelling, 2007 pp 27). Looking at We Feel Fine we can see that they tried to attract and afford active user participation: making different ways to visually represent, analyze and sample data. This lets to users create a part of their own analysis and thereby stimulate the process of analyzing data for themselves. We see that the collision between the scientific and practical approach is already there. Manovich and Fry coming from a scientific background stress the importance of analyzing large amount of data to reveal new insights out of patterns. During a presentation of Bernhard Reider at the University of Utrecht in 2011 about social data visualizations, this point was parContents from We Feel Fine, www.wefeelfine.com.

14

ticularly present. For Reider, data visualizations where used as methods in research to help the researcher in their process of doing research. Data visualization therefore must be very correct and must be designed in order to represent the data as best as possible, not for creating its own (false) interpretations of data, or visuals leading to incorrect analysis. On the other side we see the Harris and Kamvar together with Schelling, who is a teacher at Rotterdams University of Applied Sciences and also works as freelancer in the field of data visualization and new media. Here we see that they both more stress the feeling or interpretation of the user, and both are very focused on what peoples thought and cognizance are. I myself, graduated from a University of Applied Sciences, directly relate this to experience design, designing products, services and environments to afford human experience and not so much functionality. Harris and Kamvar write in their paper the following about We Feel Fine: Our aim for We Feel Fine was to collect the worlds emotions to help people better understand themselves and others. It appears to have succeeded in this aim in a surprising way. While data visualization has been defined as a tool to amplify cognition, the primary responses in the user study were affective. Indeed, cultivating emotional self-awareness and empathy are key factors in developing emotional intelligence. This suggests that data visualization can be used for more than exposing patterns in data. (Harris & Kamvar, 2011. pp.8/9)

Contents from We Feel Fine, www.wefeelfine.com.

15

Conclusion
I chose We Feel Fine because in many ways it is on the edge of certain points discussions. In this paper I have given some examples how We Feel Fine challenges our traditional beliefs and ideas about data visualizations. In that process we have seen that We Feel Fine raises critical questions about how data visualizations can be used and are made.

On the basic level of data we see that We Feel Fine challenges our idea of validating and using good data. From a scientific point of view one could easily say that We Feel Fine does not possess very deep or valid data. But less is true. While for data visualizations it is always very important to validate data, this is far more important for scientific research than of practice. Do we therefore come closer to freeing online/digital data from the ever present database structures? No. It seems that we can never escape those constrains. Giving raise to the question how to cope with these non-escapable problems. Perhaps the concept of direct visualization of Manovich is a solution for this problem. Direct visualization gives the user the opportunity to look back at the source of the data, thereby skipping the 1 stage of making data visualizations. Here we see a solution again being dependent on interaction, showing that indeed interaction is incorporated in every stage of the process of making. We have seen that Interaction design can really be approached in two ways. Scientifically we want the data to be represented as good as possible, focusing on dozens of aspects how to (dynamically) visualize data. Practically we talk more about esthetics. Here we want a visualization to be a wonder to the eye, looking less at actual representation of data. Looking at the last stage, the interpretation of the users of data visualizations, we have learned that data visualizations can be used in far more ways than science would led us believe. We have seen that We Feel Fine can be seen as almost as theatrical play or a movie, summoning strong emotions and empathy. These are ways in which science would never use data visualizations.

Contents from We Feel Fine, www.wefeelfine.com.

16

Overall we can see that both approaches can learn from each other, and in a way We Feel Fine already did. In order to cope with the scientific standards, Harris and Kamvar really opened up the hood of We Feel Fine and showed its insides, thereby trying to validate their data. On a design level, they incorporated many different interfaces and ways in which the data can be sampled and viewed, making an elaborate analysis of the data possible. On the level of interpretation they clearly choose to be different, and show us what social data is capable of doing. Science on the other hand could learn from We Feel Fine. Social data does not have to be used in the same way we have traditionally addressed anthropological data. Science could develop innovating methods to use social data to its full extend. Were perhaps We Feel Fine is only the tip of an enormous iceberg.

Contents from We Feel Fine, www.wefeelfine.com.

17

Bibliography
Christiane Paul, The Database as System and Cultural Form: Anatomies of Cultural Narratives, in: Victoria Vesna (ed.) Database Aesthetics: Art in the Age of Information Overflow. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007, http://victoriavesna.com/dataesthetics/readings.php Fry, Ben. Organic Information Design. M.S. Thesis. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 2000. Harris, Jonathan & Kamvar, Sepandar. We Feel Fine and Searching the Emotional Web. www.feelfeelfine. org, 2011. Harris, Jonathan & Kamvar, Sepandar. We Feel Fine: An Almanac of Human Emotion. Scribner, New York, 2009. Jeremy Douglass. Computer Visions of Computer Games: analysis and visualization of play recordings.. Workshop on Media Arts, Science, and Technology (MAST) 2009: The Future of Interactive Media. UC Santa Barbara, January 2009. Lev Manovich, What is Visualization? Manovich.net, 2010. http://manovich.net/2010/10/25/new-article-what-is-visualization/ Lev Manovich. Trending: The Promises and the Challenges of Big Social Data. Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold. The University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming 2012. PDF: http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2011/04/new-article-by-lev-manovich-trending.html. Rieder, Bernhard. Workshop: Computer Simulation & Data Visualisation in the Humanities. Host: Mirko Tobias Schfer, Universiteit Utrecht, 18-10-2011. Schelling A., Jasper, Social Network Visualization. Hogeschool Rotterdam, 2007. http://thesis.jasperschelling.com/thesis_jasperschelling_socialnetworkvisualization.pdf Watts, Duncan. Sheridan Dodds, Peter. Newman, M.E.J. Identity and search in social networks. Colombia University, New Tork. February 1, 2008. Zimmerman, Eric & Salen, Katie.Rules of Play. Cambridge: MIT Press. 2004 Case Kamvar, Sepandar and Harris, Jonathan. We Feel Fine. http://www.wefeelfine.org/

18