Searchscapes is a nice art project about information visualisation in the form of a cartographic representation:
The intent of “Searchscapes” is to design a tridimensional map of Manhattan using existing data from the web. The objective is to compare representations of the city’s “physical spaces” and “information spaces”. Taking the metaphor very literally, a specific address is searched on Google (ex: “1 Broadway” + “New York, NY”). Such a search will bring mostly results that correspond to this specific location. The total number of text results is parsed and then plotted on a map of the physical space. The height of the “building” on that location will correspond to the number of results found. More results will correspond to higher “information buildings”. This is an attempt to materialize information: to give it dimension, physicality.
Copyright notice: the present content was taken from the following URL, the copyrights is reserved by the respective author/s.