The Loveland project is a curious experiment in micro-property ownership and augmented reality. You buy square inches in Detroit (and simultaneously on the internet), to build as you please. It’s picking up lots of momentum and interest, so follow the ongoing saga at the blog, 7 Billion Friends, and inchvest here!

I’ve been talking with Jerry about how to visualize inches and inchvestors and give people something to explore and play with, using Stamen‘s SFMOMA ArtScope as inspiration with its zoomy grid and magnifier. The viewer I sketched in Processing.js feels like a good start and should be live within a few days!

Over coffee today we talked visual storytelling and map presentation styles, and I remarked how much tiled inch-rectangles resemble fields like these Dutch tulips.

Stop-motion animation for you today!

(Also see the making of video)

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Rudy Rucker writes a post in search of the Mandelbulb, approaches to visualizing a 3D version of the Mandelbrot set.  These gorgeous renderings come from Daniel White’s unravelling with Paul Nylander & David Makin.

Not only the light and shading technique, but the organic surface details are reminiscent of electron micrograph images. These next few come from my favorite EM photography gallery, Eye of Science (see also cool nano photography, Dennis Kunkel, Google images).

(Bonus link 1: Phidelity‘s 3D IFS fractal video for Rena Jones.)

(Bonus link 2: did you know you can run a 3D raytraced Julia Set in near-realtime on your GPU?)

Typographic experiments. A new take on Garamond:

Some handcrafted stop-motion type:

from a roundup of Creative typography art.

I also dig Dave Bollinger’s letter-packing test, and a similar Processing sketch.