During the 18th century, instrument maker George Adams built and sold solid 3D geometric models as educational complements to the 2D images found in Euclid's Elements of Geometry. As argued by a 18th-century author: It is almost as necessary as in mechanics, to exhibit the objects, whose qualities are to be taught; and to call in the joint assistance of the hands and eyes. According to the Whipple Museum of the History of Science, authors were already experimenting with paper models soon after […]
2009 – Windcuts: Wind Travels Captured on Wood
Windcuts is a physical information visualisation retelling the Helsinki wind's travels over five days, using wind sensor measurements from Helsinki, and wood and a CNC machine to cut it from there too. [...] The line's direction shows the wind's direction, the line's width shows the wind's speed - a more intense wind makes a bigger line - and the line's height shows the wind's temperature. Source: Miska Knapek (2012) Windcuts.
2014 – Rearrangeable Display of Ice Data
This 3d data visualization, created by Johannes Jacubasch and Judith Weda, shows sea ice levels from 1979 to 2012. The years are plotted on one axis and the months on the other axis, while the height of the wooden pieces shows the level of sea ice. This data visualization can be opened up at any year or month to view the data from up close. If you break the Y-axis it shows all the data from a particular year. If the X-axis is broken it shows ice levels of a particular month over all the years. […]
2014 – DIY Bertin Matrix
This wooden matrix is a large-scale replica of Jacques Bertin's reorderable physical matrices. It shows a subset of the World Value Survey, a series of questionnaires that assess people's moral values across countries and years. This physical visualization is interactive as row and columns can be manipulated, promoting engagement and collaboration. This 18x20 matrix was built by Mathieu Le Goc in the Fablab Digscope with Charles Perin and Romain Di Vozzo, on the occasion of the 25th birthday of […]
2014 – Cosmos: Carbon Exchange Captured in a Wooden Ball
Artist duo Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt created this two-meter spherical wooden sculpture located in a forest in England, and representing the take up and loss of carbon dioxide from the forest trees across one year. Watching the video, I was somehow expecting this sphere to roll at some point, but it did not happen. Source: Semiconductor (2014) Cosmos.