We set out to create a large-scale, physically-constructed data-visualization of political donations. The form of an Octopus is a longstanding symbol for the influence of money in U.S. politics, as this cartoon from 1904 demonstrates:

The Octopus form is also good for visualizing differences in data, because tentacles can be scaled to lengths or amounts. And, when done right, it’s an interesting and engaging form.

We wound up focusing on money in New York politics to keep the project more locally relevant. This data — the top 8 contributors to political campaigns in New York’s 2014 State and Federal Eleections — was pulled from OpenSecrets.org:

As you can see above, we used the amounts to calculate out proportionate lengths for each tentacle, setting the largest at 15 feet. We also calculated out the diameter of each tentacle at its base, and the base length of flattened-out plastic that we would have to use in order for each tentacle to inflate / round out into the proper 3-D cone size.

Next, we did some small test prototypes of the “plastic welding” method we planned to use for the project. The steps were:

1. Place wax paper over 2 sheets of 0.1 mm thick plastic.
2. Draw the form we wanted onto the wax paper.
3. Trace a hot soldering iron along the outline, using the wax paper as a protective barrier to help the plastic sheets fuse but not totally melt.
4. Remove the wax paper and cut away the excess plastic, then check that the two sheets had been properly melted together along the seams by the soldering iron.
5. Spot-seal any holes, then turn the final form inside out (so the seams don’t show) and inflate.

When small-scale tests like the one above proved successful, we moved on to creating the full-scale, properly-sized tentacles.

You can see more photos of this process below:

We realized we could use a basic electric fan to inflate the tentacles. To attach them to the fan, we created a cardboard template with circular openings corresponding to each tentacle size:

We then cut out the holes, pushed the tentacles through them and taped their bases to the underside of the cardboard cover. We taped this whole unit tightly over the out-blowing side of the fan, with a strong seal. This forced all the fan’s air into the tentacles when it was turned on, successfully inflating the installation:

 

Finally, we added logos of the eight political donors we were visualizing.

We wanted these logos to look like the “suckers” on an octopus’s tentacles, so we calculated the number and size of logos we would need for each one. We then printed them on adhesive paper, cut them out as rounded shapes resembling sucker pods, and affixed them to the tentacles while inflated.

Thus we arrived at the final product: “Octopi Wall Street.”