Digital Design Blog

Breathtaking UI: Universe by Artist Jonathan Harris for Daylife

Few projects succeed at bridging art and science online like Universe, created by digital artist Jonathan Harris. This is just a fantastic interactive piece that’s as functional as it is beautiful.

Jonathan Harris is an artist working primarily on the Internet. His work involves the exploration and understanding of humans, on a global scale, through the artifacts they leave behind on the Web.

http://universe.daylife.com/

From the site:

Universe is divided into nine “Stages” titled: “Stars”, “Shapes”, “Secrets”, “Stories”, “Statements”, “Snapshots”, “Superstars”, “Settings” and “Time”. “Stars” presents a cryptic star field; “Shapes” causes constellation outlines to emerge; “Secrets” extracts the most salient single words and presents them to scale; “Stories” extracts the sagas and events; “Statements” extracts the things people said; “Snapshots” extracts images; “Superstars” extracts the people, places, companies, teams, and organizations; “Settings” shows geographical distribution; “Time” shows how the universe has evolved over hours, days, months, and years. In the top left corner is a search box, which can be used to specify the scope of the current universe. The scope can be as broad as 2007, as recent as today, as precise as Vermont on August 27, 2006, or as open-ended as War, Climate Change or Happiness. The exact parameters of each universe are entirely up to the viewer, and unexpected paths unfold with exploration.

Universe does not suggest a single shared mythology. Instead, it provides a tool to explore many personal mythologies. Based on the chosen path of the viewer, Universe presents the most salient stories, statements and snapshots, as found in global news coverage from thousands of sources. Through this process of guided discovery, patterns start to emerge. Certain stories show up again and again, and they become our great sagas. Certain people start to shape the news, and they become our heroes and villains. Certain single words rise from the chatter, and they become our epic themes.

In Universe, as in reality, everything is connected. No event happens in isolation. No company exists in a vacuum. No person lives alone. Whereas news is often presented as a series of unrelated static events, Universe strives to show the broader narrative that contains those events. The only way to begin to see the mythic nature of today’s world is to surface its connections, patterns, and themes. When this happens, we begin to see common threads — myths, really — twisting through the stream of information.

Definitley worth playing around with if you have a free minute (or 5). Be prepared to be blow away.