Fan of Web Art

The Whitney Museum commissioned the Whitney Artport IDEA LINE by Martin Wattenberg. [Java required]. While Jill notes that it is not compatible with some browsers (although it's in Java, which I thought was supposed to be the cross-platform language?), the Artport Idea Line is still a really nice example of a visual interface. Each aspect of the line exhibits data: The titles are listed under an x-axis of 'year.' The brightness of the line tells how many art works are listed for a particular year (or you can have the shape of the line show 'totals' as well). The key terms are plainly visible (although it would be nice if they were briefly defined, so as to be clear). Each entry has a brief annotation.

Really neat. Of course, a search feature would also be nice. It occurs to me that this might not be drawing data from a database, but just an "installation" itself, which would be a bit of a shame...