Monday, October 09, 2006

10.09.03 Mapimation Update

These updated animations show five of the world's largest airports over the past 25 years and their growth. Chicago O'Hare, Hartsville International (Atlanta), Los Angeles International, London Heathrow and Tokyo International airports are represented by thier corresponding metaball forms. The forms symbolizing each airport grow with the increase of airport traffic over the years. The paths connecting the airport metaball forms work in a similar fashion, that is, the diameter of the tubes connecting the airports corresponds to the amount of traffic traveling between the two points connected. In these videos, the tubes are speculation and do not yet reflect factual data. The nodes off of each central metaball form representing an airport symbolize generalized "spokes" of traffic leaving each airport to give a sense of connection linking the different points; while the representation of these side nodes in the posted animations are also speculation, the final animation hopes to point out patterns of connection between different corners of the world. The final project will map about 15 of the world's largest airports and their major connections over time in an attempt to discover if this information parallels with other social demographics. Here are the links to two animation studies; top view animation and perspective view animation.

Hopefully a more elaborate revision of the previous animations can be combined with a mapping of demographic statistics such as, standard of living numbers, per capita income, or city population growths and reflect a relationship between a city and its connection to the rest of the world. My hope is that these studies will offer a valid study of population growths, population shifts, economic development and global relations over the last two and a half decades.

2 comments:

Nathan Dicks said...

I like the perspective animation a lot. Would it be too much information to deal with to show other airports around the globe? Right now, the ones you've chosen seem relatively similar, so it may be interesting to see some less-trafficked airports for comparison.

Katy Seaman said...

i talked to you a litte bit about this in class, but rem koolhaas did a study in the Harvard Design School Design to Shopping illustrates how the addition of shopping units within airports changed the function of airports from a place that transferred a person from destination to destination to an actual destination in itself. mapping pedestrian traffic involved within airports versus the plane traffic leaving and entering the airport could be interesting ...