Imagekind member Ben Fry received his doctoral degree from the Aesthetics + Computation Group at the MIT Media Laboratory, where his research focused on combining fields such as Computer Science, Statistics, Graphic Design, and Data Visualization as a means for understanding complex data.

He also currently develops Processing, an open source programming environment for teaching computational design. He’s recently used Processing on a project combining some past experiments that look at the code of cartridge games, and how the graphics are mixed in – this time with some of the most famous Atari 2600 games!

He calls the project “distellamap“, and he has decided, due to popular demand, to make these incredible images available for sale as prints on Imagekind!

These graphics represent executable code commingled with data, and curves drawn when one piece references another. The data bytes are represented as orange blocks that are “off” or “on”, which usually means that character and other graphics from the game can be seen when the data is presented in rows – which are shown upside-down, as that is how they are stored in the programming method. In other words – these are really interesting to look at, and if you are of a certain generation, it’s an appreciated contemporary view of that wonderful nostalgia. Very cool.

All these beautiful prints are being sold to benefit one of a handful of charities for child hunger and education, so grab your favorites to put on the wall next to your mint unopened copy of Breakout, or just over the Xbox.

Ben’s information graphics have illustrated articles for the journal Nature, New York Magazine, The New York Times Magazine and Seed. He is currently writing a book for O’Reilly about data visualization with Processing, and speaking at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON), July 23-27. You can learn much more about Ben and his projects on his personal website.