Welcome to the Solar Protocol Data Explorer. Clicking one of the gray buttons will load one of the solar protocol server's active energy log data into Javascript, up to 365 days worth. This only needs to be done once at the start and it may take a minute or so to send the data over broadboad, depending how much there is. Once all the data is loaded, you can interact with the data at different time intervals, and imagine the sky overhead, viewing the last three days at one time. Adjust the speed of the animation to view the plots faster or slower. To compare servers for a given day, open two browser windows side by side.
Artist statement below, while you wait.
Stills:
ms/frame
Data art often involves translating lived experience, self-tracking or scientific data into a visually coded composition. The Solar Protocol Data Explorer is an interactive viewer designed to draw the sensorial experience of being outdoors in daylight from the visitor in a co-construction of meaning, through exploration of the abstract recorded energy experience (EX) of solar panel installations across the Solar Protocol project, presently these servers listed. Data makes the unseen seeable: it storifies a sky-view at a particular time and place in the past or the present, from rich energy narrative data. How does the leading and trailing edge of the voltage vary? What do the distinct voltage levels on the panels represent in terms of the lived experience of weather? The pleasure of experiencing data animation (and art generally) is in decoding the complexity of the representation.
As the piece is designed for user exploration, it has buttons and fields for a visitor to enter what they want to see and control the view of the data -- to chart their own path through the data-history and experience it through their own interests and frames. Animation of the days can occur at different speeds, up to 10 ms per frame.
This work is by Brian Sutherland, of Toronto, Canada. Brian teaches scientific communications including courses in data visualization, and is currently competing his thesis in Information Studies on Energy Harvesting Information Systems, which proposes the electronics industry swap batteries for hybrid supercapacitors as a way to remediate the "critical mineral problem".