Maps Special: Watching Alice in Wonderland play out

UN is offering a week of interesting map interfaces and activities in the run up to the festive season. So far all the maps have been geographically-inspired but today's is an old favourite of information visualisation: a reminder that there is more to spatiality than location. "TextArc" is W. Bradford Paley's delightful rendering of the words of "Alice in Wonderland" - and other texts - in a spectacular arc. It will call up the text of the book for you and dance about linking words as it progresses or you can click on a particular word and look at the web of connections. Part art, part information design and part joy to behold.

Paley says: 'Suppose your boss hands you a 500-page book with no index, no table of contents — no metadata at all — and says you need to know the key ideas expressed in the book, where they’re concentrated (but don’t miss any important single mentions!) and, if there are main characters, who are they and when they enter and exit. Then he says the meeting starts in five minutes. TextArc, a visual concordance/index, might give you just enough to wing it...'

Associated Link: TextArc

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