Jonas Loh and Steffen Fiedler, graduates of the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, Germany, visualised the digital identities of individuals as physical sculptures for their thesis project ~IDENTITÄT.

Focusing on specific data for comparison, the digital identities of eight specific people were recorded and observed through a custom webcrawler. Their consumerist (amazon), communication behavior (twitter), interests (delicious) and listening habits (last.fm) were saved in a custom database. Furthermore this data was analysed in detail to determine four parameters that generate the form of the sculpture.

Still Life Sculptures

The goal of the project was not to create a readable data sculpture of someone’s digital life, but to express how an analogue snapshot of complex dig­ital identities can be presented. Based on four de­fined cri­te­ria all sculp­tures had to be compa­ra­ble in their form, size and ex­pres­sion. Af­ter generating those sculp­tures based upon the particles only, we added time as an under­lying factor. The particle system, which rep­resents a persons inter­ests, spreads in space until it is bal­anced. The speed of this expan­sion, the thickness of the cre­ated hull and the starting point of the drawing process is connected to the factors age, activ­ity and communication behav­ior.

This system leads to an embod­i­ment for the final ~Gestalt of dig­ital identity. A still life of an ongo­ing process about re­defining and dec­orating. This dynam­ic process of dig­ital »day life« is cap­tured in our person­al interpretation of the dig­ital identity as an amorp­hous sculp­ture.

Links

Read more about the process on digital-identities.com.
More images on flickr.

Intermediate results of the data visualisation