Data Becomes Art in the Hands of this Cartographer

Eric Jaffe profiles the work of "self-proclaimed 'map geek'" Eric Fischer, whose remarkable renderings of urban data seek to uncover a deeper beauty, and truth, in the deluge of information.

1 minute read

September 3, 2012, 11:00 AM PDT

By Jonathan Nettler @nettsj


The creator of what Jaffe finds to be "some of the most intriguing maps and spatial images found on the Internet," Eric Fischer, who until a few weeks ago worked as a programmer at Google, has a keen ability to convert the dull 1s and 0s of raw urban data into immediately understandable images.  

"Ultimately, almost everything I have been making tries to take the dim,
distant glimpse of the real world that we can see through data and
magnify some aspect of it in an attempt to understand something about
the structure of cities," he says. "I don't know if that comes through
at all in the actual products, but it is what they are all building
toward."

Now creating his visualizations as an artist-in-residence at San Francisco's Exploratorium museum, Fischer describes his design philosophy thus: "When the maps succeed, I think it is when they can confirm something
that the viewer already knows about their neighborhood or their city,
and then broaden that knowledge a little by showing how some other
places that the viewer doesn't know so well are similar or different."

Friday, August 31, 2012 in The Atlantic Cities

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I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching. Mary G., Urban Planner

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