#5 Data Portrait

Subway Mapping

Move your mouse around!

You can view my code here:)

Description

My sketch documents the number of poeple entering and leaving the subway car that I travelled in over the past week. The filled and dashed rectangles (outlined) represent the number of people entering and departing the car respectively. I use Q from 96th street 2nd Avenue to Union Square to primarily to travel to and from campus. Over the weekend I even used lines 1 and 6 to travel both uptown and downtown. I did not count myself in any of these observations. I am not recorded.

Design Process & Reflection

The sketch reche skeords the name of the line, which direction the train is moving: 'going to' or 'returning', the time of departure from the first stop and the names of the different stations that the train stopped at.

Key observations while recording data

Design Inspiration

One of my main sources of inspiration for the sketch was the graphic design system of the MTA itself.

The shapes and geometric forms that I used to represent the elements of the sketch: the filled, outlines and curved rectangles are a direct ode to painters and printmakers like Ellsworth Kelly and Frank Stella who worked primarily with minimalism and abstraction using flat colours. I felt this design style perfectly complemented the MTA graphic system first set up by Massimo Vignelli. I like basing my work on things I've learnt in the past, rooted in art history and past design styles.

Initially I thought of having a button or slider to view the different days and the visualization, but this seemed a bit boring. Then I dec decided to use the position of mouseX to display the data. I also changed the background alpha value/ opacity so one sees a certain lag that makes the sktech more dynamic. This is akin to the ephemeral quality of the fast-moving MTA trains.The 'lag' seen in the final sketch reminds me of lags or movement documented in painting, like in Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase (1912) or Natalia Goncharova's Cobo-Futurist Cyclist (1913).

Credits

This project was created based on the tutorials provided on the Critical Computation website, and the hundreds of people who travelled in the same subway car as me over the past week. I also referred to the NYC subway colour system.