What data I visualise when I visualise data about Haruki Murakami
a slow data art project by Erik Driessen
This project is a data visualisation tribute to Haruki Murakami.
It visualises the rhythm of his novels using simplified shoji shapes.
In this visualisation, a shoji resembles a chapter.
Its doors open according to the relative chapter length of the book.
For the longest chapter in a book, the doors open fully.
The doors are partially opened for shorter ones.
You can experience the project in two ways:
as static visualisations
or slow animations.
static data visualisations
You can view the static visualisations below.
There is a brief explanation for each visualisation
CITY
The first shoji visualisation I made is based on the city and its uncertain walls.
The 70 chapters form a nice 7 by 10 shoji grid.
The colour - greyish lavender - was sourced from the colour books of Sanzo Wanda (all other colours are too).
I think the colour is a nice fit for the main character:
a nice person (lavender) that somehow feels something is off (greyish).
MOON
This visualisation is based on 1Q84.
I kept using a 7-chapter-per-row grid for the other books.
That choice resulted in a challenge, as not every book has a 7-fold chapter count.
This book has 79, or 7 x 11 + 2.
I decided to use the extra two chapters creatively,
showing one at the top and one a the bottom.
This way, they resemble Tengo and Aomame in the story:
two people that are looking for each other.
The colour - night green - doesn't need any explanation.
KAFKA
Based on the book Kafka on the shore.
I broke up the 7-row grid based on the two numberless chapters.
The colour - orange yellow - is inspired on the beach.
BIRD
Based on the wind-up bird chronicle.
This time, the grid is tweaked to resemble a large building,
symbolizing the building the main character enters for treatment.
the colour - English red - is based on Malta's hat.
BELL
Based on killing Commendatore.
This time, the grid is split into two parts based on the sections in the book (32 chapters each),
the shoji in the centre resembles the prologue.
The resulting image resembles both the pit in the forest and the river the main character needs to cross.
The colour - Nile blue - also resembles that river.
CITY in print
Do you want to see one of these in real life?
There is a print of the CITY in Buutvrij (a coffee shop in my local town, Tilburg).
If you are around, make sure to have a look!
Slow Data Art Animations
Below you can see a sample of the slow data art animations.
The animation starts by laying out the grid.
(When completed, the grid follows the western reading orientation, from left to right and top to bottom.)
It then opens the shoji chapter by chapter,
and finally it hides the grid.
After this, the animation is repeated.
This animated shoji visualisation of the city and its uncertain walls
takes about 7 minutes to complete.
You can view this and other data art animations as a stand alone application using the links below.
For the best viewing experience: open the page, set it to full screen, and refresh the page.
The animation only works well if you leave the page open, so stay focused.
Videos
Prefer videos?
You can view the youtube playlist
here.
origins, page count, more details
The idea for this project came to me during a holiday in the summer of 2024.
After reading the city and its uncertain walls, I felt a rising urge to make a data visualisation project about the book.
The first result of this urge was a static version of the shoji visualisation for that book.
Later, I thought the shoji fitting for Haruki Murakami's work, so decided to add more of his books to my project.
I use a small and easy-to-understand dataset for this project: the page count of each chapter.
Using code, I calculate the relative length of each chapter within the context of the book.
This relative length (e.g. 87%) opens the doors of the chapter's shoji.
The length of each chapter also determines the time it takes for the doors to open.
The order of the animation is pseudo-randomised using a random seed based on Murakami's book titles.
I chose a slow animation speed because I think it fits the pacing of Murakami's novels.
I also think that in a time of fast-paced change, there should be room for slowly evolving work,
things that require your attention for minutes instead of seconds.
The books I included in this project are a collection of the Dutch editions of the longer novels by Haruki Murakami.
Say hi
Want to say hi? Go here.
Acknowledgements
It's both easy and hard to try and thank everyone that helped me make this project somehow.
Let me start with the easy bit.
This project would not have been made if it wasn't for Haruki Murakami picking up writing.
Thank you Mr. Murakami.
Besides that, I'd like to thank the translators at Atlas Contact, the Dutch publisher of his novels.
The harder bit is the list of indirect influences.
Things that happened at some point in the past and unintentionally pushed me towards this project.
I'd like to thank Chip Kidd, a graphic designer and the designer of the American 1Q84 cover,
for sharing his thoughts on book cover design and pointing me to Haruki Murakami's work.
Likewise, Adam Savage, former Myth Buster, named 1Q84 as one of his top science fiction books.
These two referrals made me read my first Murakami.
On a technical level there were a couple of important influences.
First, the graduation internship I did for a project by Ralf van Lieshout,
during which I discovered d3.js (a data visualisation code library).
Second, Thom Hopmans was the person who introduced me to python, a programming language.
Both python and d3.js are an essential part of what makes this project tick.
And last of all I want to thank my wife.
She gave me a beautiful edition of the city and its uncertain walls as a surprise gift.
It was through her unintentional, but also convenient, timing
that this idea started brewing and how it got where it is today.
