viz.

A year ago today, the city of Boston was brought to a standstill by led advertisements for the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie. Here’s how I described the incident way-back-when in viz.’s first blog post:

on Jan. 31, 2007, some members of the the Boston police force interpreted some electronic, guerrilla marketing devices for the movie Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters as bombs. The city closed down bridges and shut down the river to boat traffic. In the ensuing fallout, video artists Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens were arrested and the president of Adult Swim resigned over the incident.

Today, graffiti artists and other pranksters have commemorated the incident by posting similar LED art all over Beantown:

PriceofOil.org has posted a dynamic information graphic showing contributions from the oil industry to U.S. presidential candidates.

In the “relationship view,” the more money a politician has accepted from the oil industry, the bigger their picture is on the map. The more money they have accepted from an individual company, the thicker the line will be that connects them. Elected officials & companies are positioned by their relationships, those that are close together tend to have similar patterns of giving and receiving. In the “table view,” politicians are ranked by their total dollar amount received, together with the companies that donated them.

via Information Aesthetics

The New Yorker recently published an essay by John Updike on the National Gallery of Art’s exhibition “The Art of the American Snapshot 1888-1978.” The essay contains some information on the history of snapshots, and analysis of the same.

No Caption Needed has posted a brilliant analysis of the theatricality of presidential campaigns.

Jim Wilson/New York Times

From the post:

You are looking at a photo from last week of Fred Thompson stepping onto a stage in Prosperity, South Carolina. The long view allows us to see the candidate as part of a scene, rather someone around whom everything else is compressed. The view also isolates each part of the scene: candidate, bunting, handler, local supporter, and wife-and-kid are each identifiable as if pieces of a grade school diorama. What is most revealing, however, is that we see both stage and backstage in a single view. What would have been The Candidate framed by the Red White and Blue becomes instead a tacky stage set–hey, don’t trip on that cord! And instead of those gathered in his name, we see instead wife-and-kid waiting in the wings, or waiting to make their entrance, but either way now bit players that make Thompson no more than the lead in the school play.

Gerry Canavan has posted a collection of images of the Statue of Liberty taken from science fiction stories and films.