Visualizing federal spending

ABSTRACT

In this project we explore an aesthetics-oriented approach to visualizing federal spending in the United States as 3D compositions in a photorealistic style. Using procedural modeling with Python programming and Maya API, an organic flow of intermingled geometrical units is formed to represent the profile of federal spending for each state, loosely resembling the idea of money flow. The total amount of spending is scaled to a per capita basis to make different states comparable, while the overall surface area or volume occupied by each type of geometrical pattern represents its associated spending data.

Index Terms

• Applied computing

  • Enterprise computing