An Intelligent Interactive Chart That Defines Popular Music Genres in an Easily Understandable Manner

Belgian architect Kwinten Crauwels has created Musicmap, an intelligent interactive color-coded chart that is able to quickly and rather comprehensively traces the genealogy of popular music genres and defines these genres in a manner that is easily understood by fans of all ages.

Musicmap is a first-phase experiment to achieve near perfect overview of all popular music genres. This process is never-ending, always incomplete, and requires further input from the international community. …Musicmap believes that knowledge about music genres is a universal right and should be part of basic education, alongside other forms of art. Because this subject is often not found in school curricula (due to its complexity and a certain disdain for alternative/underground/low-level” culture), the need for its coverage is high. In contrast to (online) encyclopedia the genre descriptions are less technical/objective and slightly more contextual/subjective, without taking a biased stance. The aim is to evoke interest and to understand the difference between genres, not to describe them independently in an encyclopedic manner. Combined with a large focus on visual design, musicmap hopes to reach more people this way than written literature otherwise could, without losing the essence and accuracy of the content.

This dynamic project took Crauwels eight years to complete.

via Digg