For my data project I used Processing to create a simple interactive animation of data I downloaded from the Global Terrorism Database. (My application file can be found here.**) For the sake of early draft ease, I limited the information that I pulled to all recorded global incidents from 2011 to 2014, which was still in excess of 40,000 incidents.

The motivation for this project was to create a dynamic display of information that I find difficult to contextualize. To that end, the app displays location, date, mode of attack, target, casualties, and motive, alongside an animation of frenetically moving spheres. The number of spheres is constant, but their size is scaled to the number of casualties. Thus as more people are injured and maimed the more overwhemed the screen becomes. The slider across the top of the window allows the user to move forward and back through time, while the displayed information and the animation updates to the data associated with her new position.

** It requires downloading the whole folder first and then clicking on the app icon. If you try to click through in Drive it will just show you the sub-folders that make it up. Also, for reasons that escape me, the file keeps breaking somewhere between upload and download. I’ll keep trying to fix this, but if the zip gods do not smile upon me, I’ll present with my laptop and run it from there. **