"The Chart" on the series L Word maps out the social web of lesbians in Los Angeles. The character Alice keeps a running digital and paper log of each hookup within the lesbian community. It visualizes the interconnectivity of these women and shows just how closely linked they are to everyone else. I'm fascinated by this concept of illustrating a social phenomenon and the connections between people who share a common thread. The L Word show eventually created Our Chart (now inactive), a real life lesbian chart online akin to the show's chart, demonstrating how life sometimes imitates art. The L Word chart exemplifies an intriguing map concept that I would like to investigate further. It evokes fascinating themes relevant to tecnoculture: desire to connect, transference of the real life social world into the virtual realm, and digital imaging of social phenomena. I will continue to explore these themes in my work with interactive art.
The Nexus Friend Grapher taps into your Facebook social connections and maps them out spatially. The Grapher uses the nature of you and your friends' connections to one another to chart out how closely you're interconnected.
The March/April issue of Technology Review has an interesting piece on visualizing social networks. This one adds color to a social network chart to illustrate comment activity. The layout is typical social network analysis—hubs and spokes. But the Comment Flow visualization is based on communication. These images are created by tracking where and how often users left comments for other users; connections are based on these patterns, rather than on whether people have named each other as "friends." As the time since the last communication grows, the visual connection begins to fade.
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