Friday, November 23, 2007

Flight paths as art

Lynne Robinson, Hewitt, New Jersey

**Excerpt—“Thousands of airplanes zoom through our skies every day. Ever wondered what this air traffic looks like? In this animation made by digital media artist Aaron Koblin of the University of California, Los Angeles, it looks much like fireworks shattering the darkness of a night sky.

Using air-traffic data from the Federal Aviation Administration, Koblin shows the changing dynamics of air traffic over the United States and Canada over a 24-hour period. After categorizing the data based on criteria such as “types of aircraft,” “location,” and “altitude,” Koblin experimented with ways to visualize the information. He plotted the data using a programming language called Processing and animated it using Adobe After Effects and Maya.

The movie begins with a splash of dotted white and thin green lines that move slowly across the screen in different directions. As the numbers and destinations of flights increase after dawn breaks across the continent, the crisscrossing lines outline the underlying landmasses of the two countries. Then the scenes repeat with more vibrant colors, eventually zooming in on New York, Los Angeles, and Hawaii.” —**

A while back I saw this incredible animation on the news. I sat entranced in front of my TV, mouth agape as I watched the patterns of millions of planes over the U.S. and Canada throughout a 24-hour period. Try not to think about how lucky we are not to collide in mid-air, and just watch. You will need QuickTime 7 in order to play it but it’s worth every second! Some may not be able to watch and for that I apologize in advance but it’s so spectacular that I wanted to share with those that can. Click on the link below and then click on “view movie.”

Happy trails!

http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/vis2006/show/slide9.dtl

Next entry: Strays: good things

Previous entry: Happy Turkey Day!

About

Welcome, I'm Lynne. You know me better as a 'new' Jersey Girl. But now I've moved once again, this time to North Carolina. Here I write about my thoughts, good food, and of course, dogs.

© 2006-2023 Lynne Robinson All photography and text on this blog is copyright. For use or reproduction please ask me first.

If you’re new to this site and wish to read the blog entries in chronological order, click here.

Membership

Login  |  Register
November 2024
S M T W T F S
          1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Search

Recent Comments

  • C, no I did not know you played the organ, let along playing one in…

    Posted to: ‘I Could Have Been A ...’ by Lynne on 11/17/2023

  • Big sis, but so not fair that I got stuck with the organ! :( Please,…

    Posted to: ‘I Could Have Been A ...’ by Lynne on 11/17/2023

  • Interesting! I never wanted to take ballet lessons even though we had a book about…

    Posted to: ‘I Could Have Been A ...’ by Carolyn Clarke on 11/17/2023

  • Yup! Sadly, no ballet for us. My theory is that Mom probably thought since I…

    Posted to: ‘I Could Have Been A ...’ by Bigsis on 11/17/2023

  • I can absolutely see you wallowing in that chair, the color is so warm and…

    Posted to: ‘The Waller [sic] Around Chair’ by Sandy on 10/03/2023

Comment Leaders

  • Lynne - (1554)
  • Carolyn Clarke - (377)
  • Steve - (351)
  • Susan Weyler - (318)
  • Joyce Roberts - (261)
  • Reya Mellicker - (247)
  • Debra - (230)
  • lettuce - (206)
  • Susan in WA - (205)
  • Jan - (185)

Archives

Statistics

  • Page Views: 2167172
  • Page rendered in 0.1413 seconds
  • Total Entries: 2602
  • Total Comments: 6608
  • Most Recent Entry: 11/17/2023 11:01 am
  • Most Recent Comment on: 11/17/2023 04:04 pm
  • Most Recent Visitor on: 11/05/2024 05:34 am
  • Most visitors ever: 373 on 03/13/2020 06:45 am