Sophie Ashdown

It was my partner’s birthday on Sunday. It was a “significant” year so we had a big party on Saturday night. I had it all planned out where the party would spread across the garden and people could mingle easily while drinking Pimms in the sunshine. Sadly the weather had other ideas.

Despite hardly raining at all for weeks, the skies decided to pour throughout most of the hours that the party was on! Therefore almost 50 people were not swanning around my garden but instead crammed into my kitchen/living room! Funnily enough it somehow made things more fun because everyone chatted to each other so much more and mingled more widely because there was always someone just next to them to talk to.

Early in the evening we had an opera singer do a couple of tracks that floored everyone with how powerfully and beautifully she sang. Then later in the evening we had an Elton John impersonator in a full feathery outfit to get people dancing (somehow in the small space!) I am still finding neon coloured feathers around the house.

All in all it was a great party that culminated with people still dancing around my kitchen at 1:30am so I’m calling it a success despite the weather. But the party is not the point of this post!

Despite asking people not to buy him gifts, many people still brought gifts for the birthday boy. One of them struck me immediately as particularly interesting to me.

It is a mind map of rock music through the ages and it has an incredible pattern with how it relates each of the bands/artists together. The larger the print, the bigger the band, and it’s amazing to see so many there.

Here is the whole thing:

I love how it looks like a computer motherboard or a very complicated tube map. We all ended up looking at it for ages and marvelling at all of the great bands mentioned.

Check out this close-up:

With my research on data as art, I think this is a great example of how a representation of data can be fascinating and beautiful at the same time.

I’d highly recommend this poster to anyone who loves music. I might have to get one for myself!