Visualizing Global Flight Paths as Art
Chapter 1

The pioneers of visual data

Chapter 2

How our eyes read data

Chapter 3

Mapping the invisible world

Chapter 4

Living data and interactive art

YOUR GOAL

Master of The art of big data

Ch 3 · Mapping the invisible world
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choko Tracing the global flight paths above

Sep 6

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choko Mapping the Invisible World

A thousand flights tracing lines in the dark, mapping the invisible skies.

Sep 6

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choko Visualizing the deep ocean floor

Sep 6

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The glowing pulse of internet traffic

choko Mapping undersea fiber-optic cables reveals the physical skeleton of our digital world, showing how petabytes of data travel across oceans.

Sep 6

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Tracing the global flight paths above

choko Aaron Koblin's "Flight Patterns" project processed flight telemetry data to reveal the invisible highways carved by airplanes in the sky.

Sep 6

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Data Doodle Sandbox
BETA

choko Doodle with raw numbers to learn how designers turn massive data into visual art.

Sep 6

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Fun Fact

Seabed mapping: Geologist Marie Tharp was barred from research ships in the 1950s, yet she hand-plotted sonar data to create the first comprehensive map of the ocean floor.

Sep 6

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Gossip

Which invisible system is coolest to see?

Sep 6

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Quiz

Why was geologist Marie Tharp kept off research ships while mapping the ocean floor in the 1950s?

Sep 6

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choko Painting the wind in real time

Sep 6

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Quiz

What scientific theory did Marie Tharp's 1957 ocean floor map help prove to the scientific community?

Sep 6

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choko The glowing pulse of internet traffic

Sep 6

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Quiz

What type of data is represented by GPS telemetry mapped over time?

Sep 6

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Quiz

What did artist Aaron Koblin map in his 2005 project 'Flight Patterns'?

Sep 6

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Quiz

How much of the world's international internet traffic travels through undersea cables shown on the Submarine Cable Map?

Sep 6

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Quiz

Which real-time data source did Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg use for their 2012 Wind Map?

Sep 6

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Quiz

What visual effect is created when thousands of individual flight lines overlap on a dark background?

Sep 6

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Quiz

In Charles Minard's 1869 map of Napoleon's Russian campaign, what does the width of the main band represent?

Sep 6