60,000 Emails

Click on the images above …

Since 1998, I’ve been keeping all of my personal emails. I delete spam and obvious junkmail, but I keep everything else. There is a lot to be found in these emails. On some level they represent a personal history. I’ve been working on a Processsing application to help me begin to visualize the archive. A custom IMAP client accesses my email archive and imports addresses, names and other information from my address book. Over the course of 8 years, individuals use many different email addresses. In order to visualize individual relationships effectively, I have to keep track of all of the addresses. Since 1998, I have sent and received email from approximately 22 addresses.

These initial sketches attempt to reveal the underlying social networks latent in this huge archive of personal mail. Other versions of the visualization reveal more temporal aspects of relationship formation and decline.

I’m thinking of this in terms of a self-portrait initially. This particular visualization strategy was influenced by CAIDA, SCHEMABALL, GNOM, etc. An interactive version will be up sometime soon.