OKFN visualisation workshop

I’m writing this from the train journey back from the Open Knowledge Foundation’s first visualisation workshop held at Trampoline System’s offices in The Foundry, London.

My first impressions on arriving (late) to the meeting and seeing a group of interested visualisation enthusiasts (or professionals) sitting on floor mats around a rather fascinating projection of a mathematical model were that it looked like cool place to be. The office space was light, spacious and conducive to creative thinking. The people were friendly and welcoming.

The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) is a “not-for-profit organisation founded in 2004 with the simple aim of promoting (and protecting) open knowledge”, and more information about the workshop can be found here.

I was only able to stay for the second and third presentations of the day, but these were interesting informative, and I was able to pick out a good few salient points to take away and incorporate into my own work.

I was particularly interested in the work presented by Mathematician Julie Tolmie. The essence of her idea (if I understand correctly) seemed to be that her visualisations weren’t simply representations of functions, they were representations of the maths itself, and that the visualisations can be manipulated in a manner equivalent to functional manipulation. I was very inspired by the talk and Julie’s website at www.tolmie.eu. On seeing her work I could immediately see an application of similar ideas in sound and music — for visualising sound structures, processing, and graphical scores.

As is always the case with these events, the most valuable knowledge exchange is in the open discussion that takes place over lunch or drinks. On this occasion I had to leave early, but I certainly look forward to the next OKFN event — I’m sure we have a lot of ideas to exchange.