Valence: Dataset visualization

Ben Fry, a student at MIT is working his fingers off on a couple of data/information visualizaton projects. One of them is valence:

I'm interested in building systems that create visual constructions from large bodies of information. The methods used in designing static chunks of data: charting, graphing, sorting and the rest (see the books by Tufte for the complete run-down) are well understood, but much interesting work remains in finding models and representations for examining dynamic sources of data, or very very large data sets. For this work, I'm employing behavioral methods and distributed systems which treat individual pieces of information as elements in an environment that produce a representation based on their interactions. Valence is a software experiment that addresses these issues.

There are a number of sample images and a video as well as a Java application, if you are more curious. Not only does he want to

[Found via discussion on the PersonalBrain mailing list.]