Jellyfish
Horn, Carolin
Jellyfish visualizes an encyclopedia of the arts. The project should be seen as an experiment, which deals with a dynamic interface. The purpose was to remove a static, conventional design and to achieve a playful interface. The application is developed in Processing and uses an HTML-database to update content.
The encyclopedia of the arts consists of six big families of jellyfishes representative of six main categories. These are: visual arts, design arts, performing arts, literature, film and music. Each of these families is comprised of several family members—the subcategories. One jellyfish represents one family member. In this way the family “design arts” is composed of the jellyfishes architecture, furniture, interior, fashion, graphic design, and interactive design.
Besides a color-coding of the different families, the behavior of a jellyfish indicates the affiliation to its relatives. All jellyfishes can freely swim around during the running application. By touching one, the relatives (the jellyfishes of the same main category) swim next to this jellyfish. The rest, the jellyfishes of the other families, move away from the chosen one. For example, by rolling over “furniture,” all jellyfishes of the category “design arts” swim to it, whereas the others try to move away.
Small nametags inform about the type of jellyfish by rollover. In the same moment the names of the relatives are also displayed. The search for a certain jellyfish is fast and easy through its color-coding, behavior and lettering.
The structure of the single jellyfish is simple. At the margin of a jellyfish the artists who have worked in this certain subcategory are represented as dots. By rolling over a dot the name and picture of a certain artist will be shown. In this way you can find, for example, artists like Michael Thonet and Charles Eames inside the jellyfish “furniture.”
Clicking on a dot selects a certain artist. Thereby three things are triggered at once. First, a second circle grows out of the jellyfish. The margin of this circle is where the artist’s works are located, which are represented as dots. After selecting the artist Michael Thonet, for example, you can find there his famous chairs. In addition a text field appears, containing information about the artist.
Finally, a connection to another artist becomes visible, which means that another jellyfish opens itself, showing a second artist. For example, by choosing Michael Thonet the jellyfish “architecture” opens and shows Le Corbusier. Through the dot on the connection line between both jellyfishes you can get information about the kind of this link.
The artist’s works are shown on the second circle. By rolling over a dot the name and picture of a certain artwork will be shown. In this way you can find Chair No. 14 by Michael Thonet.
By the same principle as choosing an artist, you can investigate a certain artwork, too. This time two things happen at once.
A text field containing information about the work and a connection to another artwork appear. In the same way as before, you can discover information about this link. For example, you can find out that Toulouse Lautrec pictured Chair No. 14 in the painting Moulin Rouge.
