word search map

Die Zeit features a curious map of Germany: it is a visualisation of the most searched for words from a list of 64 different terms according to geographical location. In Heidelberg people look for stress and sufferning while in not too distant Würzburg people look for pleasure. In Rostock in the north east, not surprisingly, people look for work, while in Freiburg in the south west people look for wisdom and peace. It seems to have been created by Sigrid Ortwein. On her website you can find an uncommon re-interpreation of the Genesis: “In the beginning there was the IMAGE and the image became the WORD and the word was with God, and the word became LETTER, and the word became Spirit, and the letters became NUMBERS and the numbers became ROWS OF NUMBERS and the rows of numbers became CODES …”

(Am Anfang war das BILD und das Bild wurde WORT und das Wort war bei Gott und das Wort wurde BUCHSTABE und das Wort wurde Geist und die Buchstaben bekamen ZIFFERN und die Ziffern wurden zu ZAHLENFOLGEN und die Zahlenfolgen wurden zu CODES …)

psychedelic flow of information

The Falling Times is a visualisation of the flow of headlines and frequent key words from news, which are translated into pictograms. Mostly quite bleak, but strangely hynotizing.

While Falling Times leaves me slightly depressed the new Orange promotional site cheers me up: it is a never-ending website one can scroll down seemingly forever. I did not have the child’s patience or curiosity to go to the very bottom of it all. But I really quite like the pop art grunge graphics, the psychedelic rainbow river.