We have undertaken a research project that visualizes a community, especially for events such as academic conferences. As research progresses, we have noticed that small gatherings of a few persons happen during events as a vital component of forming a community. We call these happenings Social Interactions. Typical situations that foster Social Interactions include gathering around a table. Therefore, we think it is possible to visualize larger communities through obtaining and processing Social Interaction data via table-like interfaces. As one part of group research project, here we introduce an art piece, named “Tabletop Community”, that enables the visualization of Social Interactions around the table. Through this artwork system, users/participants easily record the state and atmosphere of each Interaction. The system visualizes the state of the entire community as an interactive network visualization. Here we introduce past results along with the current progress of the system.

Tabletop community: visualization of real world oriented social network (ACM Digital Library)