Zoom from Compression to Comprehension -Visual Powers of 10

This image was the graphical interface to a demonstration of zooming similar to the way one zooms in on google maps for more detail.

Unfortunately the demonstration is no longer on the web I am hoping I can resurrect it from the original artist, Andries Odendaal. I did find it on the Internet Archive, but the links beyond the landing page are missing and thus the power of the demo is missing in cyberspace. Here is the InternetArchive from 2006 10 ways

Here is what I said back in 2006 about the demonstration. "From its content to its visual components, a photograph is filled with information. Choose a point on an image and delve deeper into it, linking one idea to another in a never-ending chain."

Try the "information" demo and you'll be intrigued as the zoom "box" takes you deeper into a mosaic of thousands of color images.

On the same site, launch the demo of lightand experience a photomosaic of light and shadow and the eerie, yet powerful gradual sharpening of resolution as an image chosen from the thousands that make up the 3D object and its lighting source "dissolves" into crystal clarity.

There's enough in these two demos to prove that " A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS" taken to the "next level" with a Powers of 10 visualization "platform".

Use your imagination to visualize your multiple social network friends pictures or images of shared projects having this capability of massively compressing large collections of images into tightly packed "atomic" structures - but allowing for the collections to be "decompressed" in Powers of 10 zooming.

The image sets could be driven by external RSS feeds to highlight areas of recent interest and the zoom to full size image could be automatically driven by the feed sources.

I will try to provide an example using google maps which have both the benefit and the detriment of being geospatially constructed.

The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken

In 2003, the Hubble Space Telescope stared, for a little over 11 days at a rather unremarkable section of sky. The results were humbling on a universal scale.

The Deep Field/Ultra Deep field images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope represent the farthest we've ever seen into the universe. Looking at these images, one cannot help but be humbled by what they mean. At a glance, they show us how tiny humanity is in comparison to the size of the universe

A mind-blowing video from NASA. You can view the whole video here(6min) by clicking on the play button above or get a better view in full screen using the Google video player and downloading the selected video for viewing offline which offers a much better viewing experience. This requires you to download the Google Video Player to your desktop(onetime only). Hubble deep field - Google Video. Choose the full screen mode.

This player provides a °mosaic° of the key frames (segments) by
mousing over the frames and clicking. (illustrated below).

The normal size google video image selector offers 12 key frames, the full screen view offers 42 key frames.

This illustrates the "SoundByte" concept I have been working with this past year, and although the google frames selections appear arbitrary, it seems possible to make these frame selections ("from-to") serve as microformat links to the key frames. In this example, the soundbites are 30 seconds each, the entire video is 6:30 minutes, an attention saving of 84%. For longer video tracks, this key frame approach would significantly reduce the time a viewer needs to access key information and, if desired, he or she can queue the entire video track into a playlist for later viewing.

This process is similar to the movie trailer concept of providing key segments in a short form to "whet the appetite" of the viewer toward watching the entire movie.








Thanks to David Sederquist of NextNow for the original link.

A photomosaic Powers of 10 - from Getty Images

10 ways: "From its content to its visual components, a photograph is filled with information. Choose a point on an image and delve deeper into it, linking one idea to another in a never-ending chain."

Try the "information" demo and you'll be intrigued as the zoom "box" takes you deeper into a mosaic of thousands of color images.

On the same site, launch the demo of lightand experience a photomosaic of light and shadow and the eerie, yet powerful gradual sharpening of resolution as an image chosen from the thousands that make up the 3D object and its lighting source "dissolves" into crystal clarity.

There's enough in these two demos to prove that " A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS" taken to the "next level" with a Powers of 10 visualization "platform".