systemantics

GOOD Magazine Nation Rebuilding

Ca­ta­log­tree we­re com­mis­sio­ned to crea­te an in­fo­gra­phics about the US's na­tion re­buil­ding ac­ti­vi­ties. For this, a hu­ge set of da­ta has to be pro­ces­sed. Sys­teman­ti­cs as­sis­ted in crea­ting the gra­phics from the da­ta with a re­al­ly small Pro­ces­sing script. (March 2008)

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Concept & design: Catalogtree / Processing: Systemantics / Commissioned by: Catalogtree

DNA Card

Ca­ta­log­tree de­ve­lo­ped the de­si­gn of a per­so­nal DNA card, which was pu­blis­hed in SEED Ma­ga­zi­ne, New York. The card is for­med li­ke a cre­dit card and fea­tu­res a ser­pen­ti­ne li­ne which is built from 13 co­re lo­ci. Sys­teman­ti­cs de­ve­lo­ped the soft­wa­re to ge­ne­ra­te the li­ne from co­re lo­ci da­ta ba­sed on ca­ta­log­tree's de­si­gn. (February 2008)

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Concept & design: Catalogtree / Processing: Systemantics / Commissioned by: Catalogtree

When Bots Attack

The fa­mous Wi­red ma­ga­zi­ne fea­tu­res in its Sep­tem­ber 2007 is­sue a glo­bal cy­ber­war sce­na­rio. Wi­red com­mis­sio­ned Ca­ta­log­tree to crea­te an in­fo­gra­phic for the cor­re­spon­ding ar­tic­le ›When Bots At­tack‹, and Sys­teman­ti­cs sup­por­ted Ca­ta­log­tree with the crea­tion of the gra­phic. A so-cal­led dis­tri­bu­ted de­nial of ser­vices (DDoS) at­tack is per­for­med by thou­sands of ho­me or cor­po­ral com­pu­ters which are in­fec­ted with a spe­cial ty­pe of com­pu­ter vi­rus. When the DDoS at­tack should ta­ke pla­ce, the in­fec­ted sys­tems are used by the at­tacker -- wi­thout their know­led­ge -- to send mil­li­ons of re­quests per se­cond to a single com­pu­ter net­work so­me­whe­re el­se in the world, ef­fec­tive­ly blocking the at­tacked sys­tems. The in­fo­gra­phic is na­tu­ral­ly com­plex: it shows a world map with li­nes from the at­tacking coun­try to each of the in­fec­ted com­pu­ters, and then from each com­pu­ter to the at­tacked sys­tems. The­re is a to­tal of 285 at­tack li­nes in the gra­phic. Sys­teman­ti­cs au­to­ma­ti­cal­ly crea­ted a Post­script fi­le will all the li­nes from a da­ta­ba­se of the at­tack. (September 2007)

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Concept & design: Catalogtree / Postscripting: Systemantics / Commissioned by: Catalogtree

Grand Vision

The ci­ty of New York has a big stra­te­gic plan for the fu­tu­re which is cal­led PLA­NYC. The PLA­NYC con­sists of 157 pa­ges and is availa­ble on the in­ter­net as a PDF do­cu­ment. Ca­ta­log­tree was com­mis­sio­ned to vi­sua­li­ze the con­tents of the plan in an in­fo­gra­phic for the Me­tro­po­lis Ma­ga­zi­ne. The­re­fo­re, they com­mis­sio­ned Sys­teman­ti­cs to ana­ly­ze the plan's con­tents in a way that is suf­fi­cient as sta­ti­sti­cal ba­sis for an in­fo­gra­phic. The ana­ly­sis was ba­sed on the as­s­ump­tion that nouns form the back­bo­ne of a text. It is ea­sy to split a text up in­to words, but to get the nouns out of it, one has to tell apart nouns from other words. Sys­teman­ti­cs de­ve­lo­ped the ana­ly­sis ba­sed on the nouns known to the le­xi­cal da­ta­ba­se Word­Net. To deal with even the fle­xed forms of the nouns as they ap­pear in a na­tu­ral text, ba­sic mor­pho­lo­gi­cal al­go­rithms si­mi­lar to them of Mor­phy we­re app­lied. The re­sult from the ana­ly­sis was the num­ber of oc­cu­rences of each noun, one da­ta set for eve­ry chap­ter of the who­le PLA­NYC. Sys­teman­ti­cs de­li­ver­ed this da­ta to Ca­ta­log­tree for fur­ther pro­ces­sing. (July 2007)

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Concept & design: Catalogtree / Text analysis: Systemantics / Commissioned by: Catalogtree

Talkshow 2007-03-09, poster

Sys­teman­ti­cs de­ve­lo­ped a Ja­va app­li­ca­tion that re­cor­ded main phra­ses from a talks­how to­gether with the ti­me when they we­re men­tio­ned. To al­low Ca­ta­log­tree to crea­te a pos­ter vi­sua­li­zing and sum­ma­ri­zing the dis­cus­sion, Sys­teman­ti­cs ana­ly­zed the da­ta re­cor­ded at the talks­how by the num­ber of oc­cur­rences of each phra­se. The pos­ter shows the most used phra­ses du­ring the dis­cus­sion. Around eve­ry phra­se, a num­ber of circles is drawn. The mo­re circles the­re are, the mo­re of­ten the par­ti­cu­lar phra­se was men­tio­ned. (June 2007)

Concept & design: Catalogtree / Processing: Systemantics / Commissioned by: Catalogtree

Talkshow 2007-03-09, visualization

On 2007-03-09, <>TAG in The Ha­gue, Net­her­lands, pre­sen­ted a talks­how-li­ke de­ba­te of two gra­phic de­si­gners, one ar­tist, and one phi­lo­so­pher about da­ta vi­sua­li­za­tion. The­re was the wish by <>TAG to show a vi­sua­li­za­tion of the dis­cus­sion flow on a big screen in the back­ground. Ca­ta­log­tree and Sys­teman­ti­cs de­ve­lo­ped the con­cept of the vi­sua­li­za­tion in clo­se col­la­bo­ra­tion. The idea was to show the main phra­ses from the dis­cus­sion on the screen and sur­round it by circles. Eve­ry ten se­conds, a circle di­s­ap­pears. When all circles are go­ne, the phra­se itself di­s­ap­pears. The on­ly chan­ce to keep the phra­se ali­ve is to men­tion it a se­cond ti­me. In this ca­se, it turns from whi­te to yel­low and gets a new ti­me li­mit re­pre­sen­ted by a new amount of circles around it. Sys­teman­ti­cs de­ve­lo­ped a Ja­va app­li­ca­tion which ma­de use of the Pro­ces­sing li­bra­ry. The app­li­ca­tion was dis­played on two screens: On one screen, a ty­pist could re­cord the main phra­ses du­ring the dis­cus­sion. On the other screen, the vi­sua­li­za­tion itself was shown, fol­lo­wi­ng the de­si­gn from Ca­ta­log­tree. The vi­sua­li­za­tion was re­cor­ded and la­ter con­ver­ted to a mo­vie. The mo­vie was shown in an end­less re­pe­ti­tion du­ring the Ge­ne­ra­tion Ran­dom ex­hi­bi­tion to the ho­nor of ten years of the work of LUST, The Ha­gue at <>TAG. (March 2007)

Concept & design: Catalogtree / Processing: Systemantics / Commissioned by: Catalogtree