17 Mar 04 / project description

art, design

Ok, I admit -- the previous post needs a bit more of a description. Here's the idea:

There's this site that contains a huge database of hip hop samples. That is, it's a list of songs that are sampled matched to the songs that sample them. You can query the database now, but it's just itching for a good interactive visualization.

The implementation I'm working on right now will show the sample sources on the bottom half, plotted on axes of release year and number of times sampled. This is the part that's working in the current demo. Then I'm going to add the artists that sample those albums in the top half. (I think I'll choose their position based on some force-based model using relative levels of attraction to the sample sources.)

Right now, I'm thinking that if you run your mouse over an album on the bottom, it'll connect the dots representing that artist's other albums, and then draw lines to the sampling artists that sample that album.

That's the basic approach. It sounds complicated, but it'll make way more sense when I actually build it.

Also, I'm totally open to suggestions of other display methods or interactions.