Initial Thoughts – Theme

I knew I wanted to scrape live data and visualise it in the animation. However, to maintain coherence, I needed a consistent theme — pulling data from too many unrelated sectors (like stocks, football scores, and social media trends) would have made the animation feel directionless. Initially, I experimented with scraping diverse data points, but this approach felt forced, disconnected, and lacked a clear narrative or emotional impact. I then shifted to focusing on media and mass communication, to portray a theme that offered strong, viable live data sources, aligned with the narrative I envisioned, and allowed me to draw meaningfully from personal experience. This is ->

1. Modern media is pervasive, and ever-changing.
2. Thus, it rarely stays in our conscious memory, but embeds itself in the subconscious, subtly shaping us without our awareness

Brainstorming Media

First, I mapped out the different forms of media. It wasn’t necessary to cover every type, as long as one or two examples from each broad category were represented. I didn’t focus much on studies at first but instead drew from personal experience, considering how media has shaped me — consciously and unconsciously — through both intentional and unintentional consumption.
Since media interfaces often overlap (e.g., news or programs can appear in both print and broadcast media, ads can exist across social and marketing media, and platforms like YouTube can be categorised as a website, streaming, or social media), I had to brainstorm how to connect these elements. This helped me determine precisely what to include, ensuring a broad range of media and communication types, as well as their respective interfaces, were reflected, so that Point 1 from the theme I outlined was effectively communicated. As long as the pervasiveness of the media we consume was captured, that was enough. The live data stream and its visualisation would address the ‘ever-changing’ aspect, while the characterisation, which I would explore further after research, would cover Point 2.

Data + Rationale

Once the theme of media was decided, I needed to make sure there were frequent changes in the data I scraped (the audience should be able to tell it changes every time the film plays),

Then, I had to consider the rationale behind the data I presented. This was initially confusing — I wasn’t sure whether to focus on the rationale for the data being visualised or for the source it was scraped from. Ultimately, I chose the former, since that is the tangible product the audience interacts with, while still ensuring that I could justify my scraping sources.

Data Animation Attributes

To visually represent this, the live data will be displayed through animation techniques such as scrolling, fading, and glitching. These methods are intended to reflect the psychological effects of various media sources on viewers, demonstrating how contemporary media consumption subtly shapes perceptions, behaviors, and inner lives. Academic references will support this visual narrative, explaining the impact of media on the viewer’s psyche and why each animation technique is used to represent specific effects. I’ve also compiled a rough table with data on how each type of media can be visualized, along with studies that reflect its psychological effects and the rationale behind the chosen representation.

The main thing to ensure here was that it was ->

Media/Data & Scraping Source	Impact	References	Visualisation	Rationale
Date	–	–	On Calendar	Establish present
Social Media (Twitter)	Indifference/Desensitisation + Subconscious Programming		Leaking from her phone into her shadow as a constant, glitchy vertical scroll.
Print Media (BBC Newspage)	Indifference/Desensitisation + Subconscious Programming		Leaking from a newspaper into her shadow, with new batches of headlines appearing one after another.
Marketing Media (Reddit Ads)	Indifference/Desensitisation + Subconscious Programming		Melting off tube ads into her shadow, with the fonts pulsating rhythmically.
Web Media (Job Search Sites)	Subconscious Programming
Broadcast Media (TV Programme)	Indifference + Subconscious Programming		On TV screens in a shop, blinking steadily but not in tune with one another, and disappearing by the time she is off the screen, implied it blinked into her shadow.
Visual Media (Cinema Site)	Indifference + Subconscious Programming		On a cinema marquee, titles lighting up one by one, then dropping from the board into her shadow.
Streaming Media (Spotify)	Subconscious Programming		Floating gently from the radio into her shadow.