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.
Below you can see the slow data art piece.
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.
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.
static shoji visualisations
If you have completed an animation or if it's hard for you to focus for multiple minutes,
you can find static versions of the final visualisations of each book below.
If the project is new to you, the animations offer the best experience to view the shoji visualisations.
So proceed with caution.
Shoji visualisation
The city and its uncertain walls
Shoji visualisation
1Q84
Shoji visualisation
Kafka on the shore
