Ben Fry's specialty is taking large data sets and making them clear and interpretable, helping researchers better understand the data they have collected. In a scientific world in which enormous collections of information have become commonplace, Fry has come to represent an essential new cog in the scientific machine, a necessary step between data collection and the drawing of conclusions, a creative mind taking unimaginably complex information and bringing it back down to the human scale. < Back | Continue >
As a fellow at MIT's Broad Institute, Ben Fry was charged with the organization and visualization of one of the largest data sets in science: the human genome. Fry became fascinated with "trying to figure out a way to represent genetic data... and what we can actually learn from it." He drew his genetic data from the HapMap project, an international attempt to catalogue human genome variation across several of the world's populations. The resulting interactive visualization, entitled "Isometric Blocks," allows users to make genetic comparisons both within and between different groups. < Back | Continue >
If visualization is to continue to redefine science, there is a need for a whole field of designers who understand how to use computers to organize data. To address this problem, Ben Fry and Casey Reas developed Processing as a free open source programming language aimed at computer-savvy visual artists with little programming experience. The language, a product of MIT Media Lab's Aesthetics and Computation Group, teaches users the fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context, and has been lauded both for its power and its simplicity. Alongside the language itself, Fry and Reas have now released a guide to the language, entitled Processing, that serves as a thorough language textbook for visual artists. < Back | Continue >
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