Want to stay up on the latest news but think Google News is dry and boring? For something a little more visual, try 10x10. The site lets viewers scour the top headlines using photos, which combine to create a broad snapshot of the world every hour on the hour.
News at a glance has never been so literal, thanks to information architect Jonathan Harris, 25, creator of the site. 10x10 takes the most common words from major news outlets like BBC World Edition and New York Times International and couples them with pictures. The site lets users interactively search for the top stories by scrolling over pictures and the words associated with them.
The look and feel of the site is typical of Harris' information-enriched digital art.
"I think he is always looking for a new way to approach information with a new lens," said Jeremy Kahn, longtime friend and business partner. "People are viewing this information in a way they haven't before, which is why they come back."
The idea for 10x10's design and ever-changing content came to Harris while traveling in Greece. He started to wonder "what a moment in the world would look like," and it was from this question that he came up with the idea for 10x10.
Harris made his mark as an information artist with WordCount. This site takes the most commonly used words in the English language, with "the" and "of" ranked Nos. 1 and 2, all the way down to "conquistador" at 86,800, and lays them out for readers to view or search.
Although the information isn't new, the platform's minimalist aesthetic and fluid motion captured the attention of many, including the American Institute of Graphic Arts, which gave WordCount an award for Information Design in 2003. The institute notes, as Harris does, that observing closely ranked words tells us a great deal about our culture. For instance, "God" is one word from "began," two words from "start" and six words from "war."
"I want to create programs that live their own lives and go out and do things and develop a personality," Harris said. "It's interesting playing the role of creator but not creating the finished product."
Putting that ideal into action, Harris has found new ways for observers to interact with WordCount. This includes QueryCount, ranking words in order of how often they are searched -- with curse words being at the top of the list -- and a game that challenges viewers to find meaningful patterns in the order that words are ranked. For example, words 4,303-4,307 are "Microsoft," "acquire," "salary" and "tremendous."
Both 10x10 and WordCount were created while Harris was working at Fabrica, an Italian think tank for new media artists the world over. But before Harris scored a year-long fellowship there, he had to earn his stripes as a graphic and website designer.
Harris already had some experience with design since, as an undergraduate at Princeton, he started his own design company, originally called Flaming Toast but now known as Number27. He did this while still learning the basics of computing.
Before Harris went to college, he had never even sent an e-mail and considered himself antitechnology. That was part of the reason he decided to major in computer science. "I wanted to try it out because it was something that I hated," said Harris. "Soon I started using the medium for things outside of making computer programs."
It was during this time that he first met Miguel Centeno, a sociology professor who was also the master of his residential college at Princeton. Centeno eventually contracted Harris to create the visuals for his "nongeographic maps," a new system of cartography for Princeton's International Networks Archive.
The results are maps that organize the world around coffee trading, modes of transportation and fast-food restaurants. "He can take loose ideas and link them all into some cohesive aesthetic and technical whole," said Centeno. The sociology professor had wanted to make his ideas a reality for some time, but it wasn't until he met Harris that he found someone with the talent to actually create the platform. While Harris was working on Centeno's maps, he was living at The Chocolate Factory, home and production site for Oral Fixation.
When Jeremy Khan, a fellow Princeton student, started Oral Fixation, a hip mint company, he wanted the designs for everything from the mint box to the website to be unique. Recognizing Harris' talent, he asked his schoolmate to be the creative consultant, giving him the freedom to do whatever would engage their customers.
The result is a retail website unlike most others, based on an idealized version of The Chocolate Factory, where the company's founders live and make their product. The site includes up-to-date information on the weather at the Hopewell New Jersey factory, hidden secrets, videos and games; the site even gives the visitor control over background music and scenery for the imaginary landscape.
To date, 10x10 is Harris' most acclaimed work, with aspects of his design popping up all over. "One of those icons on their own isn't meaningful, but on the grid interacting they are more than the sum of their parts," said Joel Lewis, 24, who lived with Harris at Fabrica and coined the name 10x10.
"What interests me is trying to find descriptions of humanity in very large data sets, creating programs that tell us something about ourselves," said Harris. "We set them free and they come back and tell us what we are like." This theme can also be found in his latest work, Understanding Vorn.
Understanding Vorn was made for Vorn, a German magazine, which roughly translates to "ahead in time." Understanding Vorn constantly searches thousands of weblogs for pictures that begin with V, O, R and N, and links to the sites they come from. Combinations are never repeated, and once passed are forever lost to time.
When asked about the future, Harris was excited but vague. "The next project I'm working on right now involves looking at human feelings on a large scale from the web," was all he would divulge.
