From the webpage:
null_sets is a new body of artwork aimed at exploring the gap between data and information. consisting of a set of images (plus a free app), this project stems from our interest in glitches, code-breaking, and translation. our custom script encodes text files as images, making it possible to visualize both the size and architecture of large-scale data sets through an aesthetic lens. so if you ever wanted to see hamlet as a jpeg and find artistic merit hiding within its code, here’s your chance.
The video on the homepage gives you a good introduction to the project.
I included this under “interface research/design” in addition to visualization.
If it is fair to talk about Hadoop needing to be “interactive,” it stands to reason that visualization of large data sets should be as well.
Does make me wonder what change tracking would look like for interactive visualization? So you could play-back or revert to some earlier view. (Or exchange snapshots of views with others.)
I first saw this at: Null_Sets: Encoding Text as Abstract Images by Andrew Vande Moere.