This multi-touch installation reveals how Max Planck institutes collaborate with each other and their international partners. Through network views, the connections between institutes are visualized as the width of shapes, such as circles and lines, denote the number of publications produced independently or in association. In order to locate the institutes geographically, a map view on the right hand-side situates the respective locations of the institutes and features the position of external collaborators all over the world.
For this visualization, over 94,000 publications were analysed, from more than 16,000 institutions over the last ten years from SciVerse Scopus. As part of the visual language of the work, interacting with one of the institute icons on the multi-touch screen centers the view and highlights its most relevant partnerships. Visitors can move and zoom through all views by touching and ‘pinching’ (moving two fingers together or apart). The outcome of the work is a visualization of the international flow of ideas represented metaphorically by streams of energy particles that are continuously exchanged between institutions.
The installation can be seen in the Max Planck Science Gallery in the Science Forum (Markgrafenstraße 37, Berlin).
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