Okay, pop quiz: what does a SF digital arts organization Grey Area Foundation for the Arts and '80s pop icons Duran Duran have in common?

An interest in data visualization, it turns out.

A fortuitous meeting during international travel led to an unusual collaboration between the local group and the aging megastars.

Josette Melchor, founder and executive director of GAFFTA, and Rachel Masters, co-founder of Red Magnet Media, both attended the Digital Life Design (DLD) conference in Munich in 2011 and met during a layover. Masters’ company had been working with Duran Duran to increase their online presence, and they were interested in creating a data visualization project. GAFFTA brings together coders and designers to create art based around digital culture. 

A year later, the Here Right Now project was debuted at the same place it started: at the 2012 installment of DLD.

Duran Duran commissioned GAFFTA to create a website that solicits users to riff on simple ideas by uploading their own data. Duran Duran hasn't shied away from technological advances in the past: they were one of the first rockbands to heavily integrate video into their live stage shows.

“They wanted to find a way to visually represent what different people around the world thought about certain things at different times – what they needed, what they wanted and how that changed over time,” wrote Kristen Hawley, digital stratgey consultant at Red Magnet Media, in an email.

At the top of the screen are words sourced from songs off Duran Duran’s new album, “All You Need is Now”, like "red", "friends", "moon", and "sunrise". (No, you will not find "wolf" or "Rio" on the list.) Below is a hot pink globe that can be spun around, with pins sticking out of it. The pins in the globe represent users around the world who have uploaded images they think embody the prompt words.

A user in Rio de Janeiro uploaded a picture of a watermelon slice topped off with a maraschino cherry for the word “red”. On the right side of the screen, tweets that contain the same keyword scroll past in real time: “lol dude I need to go buy a red shyrt 4 my heels”. The mash-up of mediums has the effect of creating an experience that seems both random and interconnected.

The site was rolled out slowly to the Duran Duran fan community at first, and Melchor, in a talk she delivered with founding Duran Duran member John Taylor at DLD12, said they used their initial responses to tweak the site. They also created two versions of the site, one that displays well on modern computer monitors, and one retooled to display on older monitors, so that people around the globe could participate in the project.

There are no plans at this time to repurpose the data collected for other projects, but Melchor explained during the DLD presentation that the site was designed in such a way that they’ll be able to open up the data, remix it, and look for patterns.

Check out the talk above. They start talking about Here Right Now at 21:50.