The thinking

For this project, we teamed with Amsterdam-based multidisciplinary studio Minivegas and Heimat, Berlin to create a Twitter visualization tool with a modern twist.

Created for CNN in advance of the COP17 Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, Ecosphere utilizes the WebGL capabilities of modern browsers such as Chrome, Firefox and Safari to create a globe populated with trees that grow in realtime.

Every tweet tagged with hashtag #COP17 stimulate growth in a plant or tree in the Ecosphere that represents a certain topic, such as sustainability. The Ecosphere constantly listens to the global conversation on Twitter. Every new tweet tagged with hashtag #COP17 is brought into the environment, scanned for keywords and then grouped with similar contributions, connecting input from around the world, and building conversations within the dynamic environment.

With the help of WebGL’s advanced graphical capabilities, the site is a dynamic, 3D environment of a calibre that many users haven't seen in browsers before. The lush 3D environment allows the viewer to explore, view content up close or zoom out to observe the visualisation as a whole. Ecosphere will culminate in Durban with an installation piece at the COP17 Conference that renders this globe as a 3D holographic image.