Networks in Motion

Networks are rarely static, they shift, evolve, and transmit activity over time. In this talk, I explore how visualization helps us make sense of networks in motion, from social systems to infrastructure and beyond. Drawing on metaphors like traffic flow, I compare temporal models, i.e., snapshots, aggregations, and event-based dynamics, and discuss how each supports different kinds of reasoning. I’ll highlight challenges like visual overload, temporal ambiguity, and complexity, and examine a range of visualization strategies, from traditional node-link diagrams to dimensionality reduction techniques. Ultimately, the talk reflects on how our choices, about time, representation, and abstraction, shape what we can see, understand, and communicate in dynamic networks.