I am captivated by stuff like that: Large chunks of data, sorted, chewn, displayed and arranged in a flexible way to make it understandable for our pea-sized minds. This is why I love the lecture and videos of Hans Rosling (via Kosmar), who managed to digest the entire data of the past 50 years’ UNO studies in one single faszinating flash tool: Gapminder.

Here is something different:
Dietmar Offenhuber (Austria & Cambridge) and Gerhard Dirmoser (EnergieAG) created the Network Context Visualizer Semaspace. It’s made easy to understand by this video:

SemaSpace is a fast and easy to use graph editor for large knowledge networks, specially designed for the application in non technical sciences and the arts. It creates interactive graph layouts in 2d and 3d by means of a flexible algorithm. The system is powerful enough for the calculation of complex networks and can incorporate additional data such as images, sounds and full texts.

Get a grip here: Two examples to try out for yourself (it’s fun to move around data in 3-dimensional space). You need to install Virtools 3D plugin in order to view this:

• 25 years of ars electronica
• Gedankenraum

Well, in 2009, the music service Musicovery might switch it’s interface to 3D with tech like that.