Kim Albrecht

Over the last five years my work has become influenced by the idea of design as ‘drawing things together’. A connection between art, science and technology. Before the renaissance, art and science were not seen as two separate disciplines. Today they co-exist in our cultural realm but intersect only seldomly. I am trying to bring these disciplines closer together through the artefacts I create. My work is done collaboratively with scientists. Once created, they become boundary objects reaching various audiences.

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BillionairesIndividual work2012

Billionaires is a visualization of all humans with

a capital over 1.000.000.000 dollar. The data

comes from forbes.com/billionaires/ but the

way the information is visualized provides a

very different picture than the list from forbes.

The 1.600 people are categorized by country

and industry they made their money in, this

gives an overview about the location and

source of wealth. The graphic shows the macro

connections of wealth and their origins.

kimalbrecht.com/project/billionaires/

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MeteoritesIndividual work2013

Visualisation of all fell and found meteorites

between 1900 & 2000. The graphic gives a

special view on meteorite findings by comparing

time and longitude on a radial axis. This kind

of visualisation shows the human bias on

the physical locations of found meteorites.

For example there are two big holes on the

longitude of the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans.

It shows how the USA are constantly searching

for meteorites over the last 100 years. The

strategic searches in Libya the North and South

Pole over the last 20 years show up as clusters.

kimalbrecht.com/project/meteorites/

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Charting GermanyZeit Online - with Christian Bangel, Julian Stahnke, Paul Blickle, Sascha VenohrData & Interface Design2014

Germany marked the 25th anniversary of the

fall of the Berlin Wall. East and West Germans

took it upon themselves to forge a new country.

But what has become of them a quarter of

a century later? GESIS, the Leibniz Institute

for Social Sciences, has collected information

about German society every two years since

1980. The German General Social Survey asks

the Germans what they think about issues

like family, politics, religion and foreigners.

We have culled and visualized answers from

eastern and western Germans to 15 questions

spanning from the early 1990s to 2012. Taken

together, their attitudes towards abortion,

education, social inequality and patriotism

paint a previously unknown picture of German

reunification.

This interactive storytelling completely based

on data enables readers to explore the changing

‘German Zeitgeist’ of east and west since 1990

simply by scrolling.connections of wealth and

their origins.

zeit.de/gesellschaft/germany-east-west-surveys.html

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CulturegraphyMA Thesis - FH Potsdam2013 - 2014

Culturegraphy investigates cultural information

exchange over time also known as ‘memes’.

These networks can provide new insights

into the rich interconnections of cultural

development.

Treating cultural works as nodes and influences

as directed edges, the visualization of these

cultural networks can provide new insights

into the rich interconnections of cultural

development. The graphics represent complex

relationships of movie references by combining

macro views summarizing 100 years of movie

influences with micro views providing a close-up

look at the embedding of individual movies. The

macro view shows the rise of the self-referential

character of postmodern cinema, while the

micro level illustrates differences between

individual movies, when they were referenced

and by whom. The visualizations provide views

that are closer to the real complexity of the

relationships than aggregated views or rankings

could do.

culturegraphy.com

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Movies by time (vertically) and network community (horizontal).

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Visualization of a single movie and its references. Lines above Star Wars indicate movies which referenced Star Wars. Movies

below Star Wars inspired George Lukas team.

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9.The Birth of a Nation - 1915

6.Dr. No - 1962

2.King Kong - 1933

14.Chang. A Drama of the Wilderness - 1927

11.Intolerance. Love‘s Struggle Throughout the Ages - 1916

8.Scarface - 1932

5.Psycho - 1960

13.The Lost World - 1925

3.Cabiria - 1914

10.Metropolis - 1927

7.Frankenstein - 1931

4.The Wizard of Oz - 1939

12.Casablanca - 1942

15.Gone with the Wind - 1939

1.Star Wars - 1977

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Movies and their inspiration networks over time (vertically) and number of references (horizontal).

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How different genres influenced each other. In the lower picture all genres are visible. Red means highly influencial, light blue indicates only few references. The matricies above show

influences over time of the seven most referencial genres.

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Network UniverseCenter for Complex Network Reseach 2015

On the basis of the illustris project we

visualized the larges network structures of the

Universe. Each point represents one galaxy.

The connections between the points show

the attractions between the galaxies. This

representation of the largest known structures

to human kind shows the filaments of the

Universe. They are thread-like formations which

create so called superclusters. Many scientists

talk about the cosmic web, we are the first ones

who actually visualized this idea.

The project is web based on webgl technology

to be able to compute this large datasets in an

explorative way.

Project will be published in 2015

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Sport & SuccessCenter for Complex Network Research2015

How is celebrity status or popularity related

to performance in sport? To understand the

connection between these two we analyzed and

visualized the top 420 tennis athletes rankings

and their popularity on wikipedia over the last

seven years.

Project will be published in 2015

time

Tommy Haas

rank

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Success

Popularity Performance

CVKim Frederic Albrecht

me@kimalbrecht.comkimalbrecht.com

Visual researcher & information designer. Among others interested in networks, time, power, processes and how we can find visual representations for these topics to produce and represent knowledge. Currently based in Boston, working at the Center for Complex Network Research as visualization researcher.

Work Experience:

2015 / Data Visualization Research Specialist / Center for Complex Network Research / Boston2013 -2014 / Research Assistent /  Interaction Design Lab / Federal Ministry of Education and Research / Potsdam

Education:

2013 - 2014 / Master of Arts / Design / University of Applied Sciences Potsdam / Potsdam2010 - 2012 / Bachelor of Arts / Graphic Design / aaa School of Advertising / Cape Town

Talks:

2014 / NetSci2014 / Arts, Humanities, and Complex Networks / Berkley

2014 / visualized.io / London

2014 / DL2014 / The Search is Over! / London2014 / IXDS / Per-Work Talk / Berlin2014 / LinuxTag / Tracing and Logging / Berlin

Media:

2014 / economist.com / The quick and the dead

2014 / wired.com / Infographics That Reveal Kooky References in Your Favorite Films2014 / gizmodo.com / 100 Years of Movie References, Visualized2014 / Infographics - Designing & Visualizing Data / Sandu Publishing2014 / information aesthetics. / Culturegraphy

Awards:

2013 / Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards / Gold Award / Meteorites 1900 - 20002013 / Pendoring Awards / Silver Award / Analysis of Space

2012 / Loerie Awards / Silver Award / Typafrica

Exhibitions:

2014 / IEEE VIS Art Show / Culturegraphy / Paris2013 / Frieder Nake - Licht ins Dunkel / Tweetable Codes / Bremen

Workshops & Courses:

2014 / Tweetable Codes / University of Applied Sciences Potsdam / Potsdam2014 / SaSER Visualization Workshop / Munich

Publications:

2015 / Leonardo Journal / Culturegraphy

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“Stunning, playful, shrewd and at times

brilliant, many of the presentations

showed how the state of the art is

being advanced. Kim Albrecht, a

German designer, presented his work

“culturegraphy” , depicting how popular

films have referenced one another over time.”

Kenneth CukierThe Economist economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/12/new-data-visualisations

“The question Albrecht wanted to

tackle was a big one: How might we

visualize something as pervasive and

invisible as cultural transmission?”Kyle VanhemertWired.com wired.com/2014/09/infographics-reveal-influences-movies-share

“Although the visualizations look

rather minimalistic at first sight, their interactive features are quite

sophisticated and the resulting insights

are naturally interesting.”Prof. Andrew Vande Moereinfosthetics infosthetics.com/archives/2014/09/culturegraphy_the_culture_influences_ and_references_between_movies.html

“@kimay I am using your thesis in my

classes. Will be in my new list of best

cultural Visualizations ever made!”Prof. Lev Manovich twitter.com/manovich/status/576432328962101248

Kim Frederic Albrecht

me@kimalbrecht.comkimalbrecht.com

@kimay