At our discussion on information visualization last week we looked at We Feel Fine - a web application dedicated to exploring emotion using data from the blogosphere. The creators of that site, Johnathan Harris and Sep Kamvar, now have an interactive visualization installation at the MoMA in New York City entitled I Want You to Want Me. It is currently part of the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition

The visualization explores love and online dating, chronicling the online profiles of people from various dating websites. The data taken from the profiles is presented in the form of balloons floating in an interactive touch screen sky. Users can change the weather and explore the profiles. The piece has five movements Who I Am (showing sentences that start with “I am…”), What I Want (showing sentences that start with “I am looking for…”), Snippets (looking at openers, closers and taglines), Matchmaker (an algorithmic match-up of profiles) and Breakdowns (showing the most popular turn-ons, first dates, desires, self-descriptions and interests). You can find more information about the installation at their site.

Some other interesting web applications by Johnathan Harris include:

Lovelines (Johnathan Harris and Sep Kamvar) - exploring the landscape between love and hate using data from blogs.

Universe - exploring modern mythology in the form of the night sky and constellations

10 x 10 - exploration of images and words in the news.

Wordcount - an interactive presentation of the 86,800 most frequently used English words.

Whale Hunt - interface for telling the story of a traditional whale hunt in Barrow Alaska