"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius."
The data refers to the evolution of the top 4 maritime empires of the XIX and XX centuries by extent. I chose the maritime empires because of their more abrupt and obtuse evolution as the visual emphasis is on their decline. The first idea to represent a territory independence was a mitosis like split — it’s harder to implement than it looks. Each shape tends to retain an area that’s directly proportional to the extent of the occupied territory on a specific year. The datasource is mostly our beloved wikipedia. The split of a territory is often the result of an extent process and it had to be visualized on a specific year. So I chose to pick the dates where it was perceived a de facto independence (e.g. the most of independence declarations prior to the new state’s recognition). Dominions of an empire, were considered part of that empire and thus not independent.Manuel Lima
I don’t wanna call this small experiment of information visualization neither information art. Either way sounds too pretentious — as the visuals are not very sophisticated or elegant, and the way that the information is treated doesn’t enable the extraction of advanced knowledge. Although, it works very well as a ludic narrative. I ultimately found it very joyful. A direct interaction with the timeline could be a future plus!
The most interesting thing is that although not very extent, this data can be worked and displayed in several ways. More work on that, perhaps, later.
Some very cool japanese barcodes, designed by japanese firm d-barcode, who specialize in designing these unique barcodes. Many more after the jump!
Via Popsop
