World Processor – Ingo Günther / Infoviz project

Worldprocessor is an interesting project started on 1988 by the anthropologist and artist Ingo Günther. Ingo creates beautiful globes by representing on them different kinds of information in a visually appealing way. Exhibitions of the globes have been done all around the world. More information about the globes below and many others can be found in his  catalogue or in his blog, where he posts photos of the globes regularly. The works are also published on an artistic book.

http://worldprocessor.com/catalog/world/

http://sciencescapes.co.uk/2010/11/03/worldprocessor-by-ingo-gunther/

Life expectancy is a core factor in the human development index. With 82 years Japan has the highest life expectancy. All 35 countries at the bottom of this list are located in sub-Saharan Africa; their citizen's average life expectancy is between 52 and 39 years.

data globes

During siggraph 2007, the only project that could attract our attention + made us spend more than an hour observing it was these globes. During exhibition, 20 (maybe more) of these globes were installed in a dark chamber and were illuminated from inside. Each globe, same size and shape, represented a type of data that belongs to the world (terrorism rates, number of tv’s, money transactions, oil sources, etc…). It looked very detailed and visually compelling. Love the work.

Now that I’m working on my thesis, I remembered this project and I think it’s a very good source of inspiration. It’s a pretty long lived project (from 1988 to 2005).

here is the link..