Ebru Kurbak / Mahir M. Yavuz: Newsknitter

It’s another day where I’m looking for ways to visualise huge bits of information for a project that I’m working on, and I stumbled upon the Newsknitter project.

News Knitter is a data visualization project which focuses on knitted garments as an alternative medium to visualize large scale data. ….

News Knitter converts information gathered from the daily political news into clothing. Live news feed from the Internet that is broadcasted within 24 hours or a particular period is analyzed, filtered and converted into a unique visual pattern for a knitted sweater.

It’s the brainchild of Turkish artists Ebru Kurbak and Mahir Yavuz. From the Generator.x website and conference:

The Newsknitter web site does not indicate whether custom garments will eventually be for sale, even though it would seem an obvious extension of the project. Too bad the daily news typically makes for a grim way to commemorate one’s birthday or other significant date.

It reminds me of CNN headline T-shirts, but this is much, much cooler. With such products easier to make, it’s odd that news organisations aren’t thinking more about interesting products based on their information. Oh well, back to looking for data visualisations.