The Interactive Artist

Jonathan Harris is an artist borne and inspired by the age of information, whose impressive work finds balance within the chaos of technology, storytelling and human emotion. I have been consistently inspired by his characteristic ability to breathe beauty into data, as well the intuitive ways in which he enables his users to navigate his subjects [which are, in effect, one in the same]. As such, I thought to highlight a few of my favorites — including this year’s “The Whale Hunt”, which is open for voting in the 2008 Webby Awards — in the hope that it may spur you to think, design and approach the world differently. Enjoy…

We Feel Fine: an “exploration of human emotion in six movements” which scours the web for traces of human feeling, and offers fascinating insight into the collective sentiment of any given gender, age, nationality and time-frame.

The Whale Hunt: a “storytelling experiment” comprised of 3,214 photographs which chronicles the springtime ritual of Alaska’s Inupiat Eskimos. The rich imagery in this visual tale is powered by an intuitive and multi-faceted interface, and allows for extensive filtering based upon scenes, characters, context and the “cadence” of the storyteller’s own emotion.

Phylotaxis: an interactive expression, derived from the Fibonacci Sequence, which “illustrates the delicate balance between science and culture in our world. Without the randomness of culture, science becomes dry and predictable, imprisoned in a strict square grid. Without the rational thinking of science, culture quickly teeters towards chaos.”

I Want You To Want Me: a touch-screen installation commissioned for Valentine’s Day by the New York Museum of Modern Art which visualizes “the world’s long-term relationship with romance, across all ages, genders, and sexualities, gathering new data from a variety of online dating sites every few hours.” The experience unfolds across 5 major themes: Who I Am, What I Want, Openers, Closers and Taglines… but to fully appreciate the concept, check out the video below:

You can check out a number of his other “experiments” here, and please offer up any similarly inspiring creations in the comments below.