Mark Hansen is easily one of my favorite statisticians today. He is a Professor of Statistics at UCLA and his collaborations with artists have brought data visualization to a whole new place, one that is both informative and moving.
Here is a video of his project with Ben Rubin called Listening Post. The installation grabs conversations from unrestricted chat rooms and processes them in real-time to create interesting “themes” or “movements”. I believe this one is called “I am” and the video is taken from the Whitney Museum of American Art.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD36IajCz6A&w=420&h=345]
Here some pretty cool time-lapse photography of the installation of Listening Post at the San Jose Museum of Art
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cClHQU6Fqro]