viz.

(Image Credit: Michael Nagle, Getty Images via In Focus)

During the past week Occupy Wall Street has gained increasing media attention. The movement, initially called for by the group Adbusters, began in earnest on September 17th when protesters first began to occupy Zuccotti Park. This initial act seems to have largely been met with bemused ambivalence, and while there was originally a single demand articulated by Adbusters in their July call to action—that “Barack Obama ordain a Presidential Commission tasked with ending the influence money has over our representatives in Washington”  (Adbusters) –things were quite murky by the time the occupation took shape. Much of the media attention that the movement has gained, especially during this surge in participation, has focused on the apparent lack of concrete demands set forth by OWS. This confusion is misplaced. While the list of hopeful outcomes is amorphous a clear sense of oppositional branding has been developed   from the wealth of signs and images created through the movement. OWS demands that we put a hold on our love affair with notions of prosperity that put us in a double bind. 

via Mother Jones, "It's the Inequality, Stupid"

Infographics can provide visual drama and emotional impact to otherwise incomprehensible and dry numbers. As Ladysquire's recent post on The 12 States of America demonstrates, they can be particularly good at capturing income inequality. The image from Mother Jones above is another nice example of the striking disparity among Americans' perception of wealth distribution, what they wish it were, and what it actually is.

Just spotted a link to this at Andrew Sullivan's blog (h/t): check out the wonderful compilation of explanations of the current financial crisis by graphic designers at FlowingData. Image credit: cypher13 via flowingdata.com

FlowingData is a site that "explores how designers, statisticians, and computer scientists are using data to understand ourselves better - mainly through data visualization. Money spent, reps at the gym, time you waste, and personal information you enter online are all forms of data. How can we understand these data flows? Data visualization lets non-experts make sense of it all." To my knowledge, the site hasn't been linked on viz. before--but I think it's something our readers would really like (but then, they probably already know about it).

This video does contain some pretty disturbing imagery of people receiving shock therapy and other forms of state-sanctioned violence. So consider yourself warned before you click "play."