PRANCING HORSE

METASTORYTELLING

The story of how this Story is told

IDEA

Data Visualization has a great storytelling potential. Narrative Visualiation is widely used in sports storytelling, in fact journalists are masters of this technique.

PrancingHorse Project proposes this narrative in a new context: an historical character storytelling (Historytelling).

THE STORY

You need good data to make good Data Visualization. For this reason a relatively recent event was chosen as the theme. It is very difficult to draw interesting data from ancient sources (but it will probably be the next step).

The story of Francesco Baracca, the Italian ace of the great war, proved to be a perfect story.

First of all it's a war story, and we know: "Polemos Is the Father of All Things"(Heraclitus)

The career of a fighter pilot is not so different from a sport driver (except the cruel part), for this reason the use of a typically sports narrative technique is even more effective in this context. Furthermore, the story of Baracca is strongly linked to Formula 1, and this makes this project a great tribute to Baracca's memory linking History and Sport.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Segel E., Heer J. (2010).Narrative Visualization: Telling Stories with Data . IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.
Varriale P. (2011). Gli assi italiani della Grande Guerra. pp. 42-49
Gentili R., Iozzi A., Varriale P. (2002). Gli assi dell'aviazione italiana nella Grande Guerra. Aeronautica militare, Ufficio storico. pp. 53-81
Varriale P. (2006). Il maggiore: vita e voli di Francesco Baracca.
Nicolle D. (2012). The Italian Army of World War I.
Sharpe M. (2000) Biplanes, Triplanes, and Seaplanes.

DATASET

In studied bibliography, Baracca's victories are always summarized through a table. It was decided to use this narrative style and improve it thanks to digital media.

First, data of 34 Baracca's victories were collected in json format. Subsequently victories places coordinates have been retrieved and stored in a geojson file, in order to have digital information about places.

Finally, new information were retrieved to increase dataset. For each victory has been added:

Context, the historical battles fought by Italian army during Great War.
Squadron to which Baracca belongs
Flight departure airport
Flight distance (calculated with an algorithm)
Frontline Geographical data (data, already digitized, taken from CNR)
Text of victory report written by Baracca himself (Work in Progress)

CAREER SLIDESHOW

Obviously a json dataset, although rich in information, is not yet a story. It was therefore necessary to create a storytelling platform to visualize and give life to data, providing intuitive and fast exploration of large data resources.

The Prancinghorse Storytelling Platform represents a compromise between author and users in exploring the story. On the one hand the story takes place in a linear sequence pre-established by the author (historical sequence) on the other which offers more interactivity to users.

Interaction use an interactive Slideshow structure based primarily on temporal navigation (forward or backward) through the timeline or buttons.

Platform is divided in 3 sections,

TIME: every victory has been arranged along a timeline
SPACE: every victory is depicted on the map
ACTION: every victory has a table which summarizes fight's information

Aristotle would be proud of it.

INFOGRAPHICS

Once the dataset was completed and displayed, it was possible to proceed with data analysis and production of statistics to create graphics. Infographics Section is Author-Driven part of the storytelling (as well as the section you are reading), so its structure is linear and everything is focused on heavy messaging. The important task here was to convey message trough a smart and creative design space analysis in order to capture user's attention.

Sports storytelling was a great source of inspiration.

Formula 1

Formula 1 use on board camera technique to make spectator feel inside the car, seeing what the driver sees.

MotoGP

Like Formula 1, also MotoGP uses on board camera technique. In addition, information on driver ahead are provided.

Enemies Fate Graph

Enemies Fate Graph was created using on board camera graphic, simulating Baracca's point of view and making scene more dramatic. Furthermore, taking inspiration from MotoGP, a donut chart was added on the rival pilot showing probability (calculated on our dataset) of what will happen.

Football

In this example, football fan data are depicted to represent a football stadium.

Vistories by Plane Chart

In case of data concerning planes there are 2 main details that can be used for graphic representation, wings and propeller. It was chosen to represent data with a pie chart and certainly this type of chart is perfect for simulating a working propeller.

Soccer (videogame)

Representing a player's skills through a radar chart is a technique widely used in soccer video games.

Planes Stat Chart

This graph was created using data external to the dataset but it is essential to understand the rapid evolution of aeronautical technology during Great War. It is important to note that different aircraft statistics correspond to different units of measurement. It was therefore necessary to normalize all data using an algorithm before placing them on the radar chart.