Global Architecture
| CODE: |
GitHub |
| DATATYPE: |
images |
| SOURCE: |
Instagram |
| PLACE: |
Bangkok, Berlin, Moscow, Sao Paulo, Tokyo |
| YEARS: |
2014-2015 |
| SIZE: |
2,440 |
| SUBSET: |
"architecture" |
| VIZTYPE: |
growing entourage gridded |
| FEATURES: |
stylistic; hierarchical clusters |
| FEAT SRC: |
Miriam Redi |
| ORIG FEAT DIMS: |
95 |
| PROJECTION: |
PCA |
| PROJECT: |
Global Photo Cultures |
| MORE INFO: |
Software Studies Blog |
| ANNOTATION: |
city charms |
This is a "growing entourage" plot of Instagram images in the category "architecture". Such plots take images located in a high-dimensional similarity space, cluster them by some method, and project the clusters to a 2D canvas. Here, the images are grouped by agglomerative hierarchical clustering in a 95-dimensional stylistic similarity space. The centroids of each cluster are then projected to 2D by PCA and forced to a 5x5 grid. They then take turns adding members to their "entourages", in order of visual similarity to the centroid. New members occupy the open square nearest their centroids. Territorial conflicts are settled by this principle. Empty squares are centroid locations. Each image in this visualization is also marked with a colored dot (a "charm") to indicate which city it comes from. Bangkok is green, Berlin chartreuse, Moscow red, Sao Paulo purple, and Tokyo yellow. This allows the viewer to see, e.g., which visual styles are very city-specific.