Sixty-Six Clouds: Visualizing Word Frequency in the Bible

My taste in art doesn't run to the sentimental. There are no paintings of glowing cottages on my walls, no feel-good mottos stenciled with leafy borders. Popular religious art tends to be pretty kitschy in my book, which is why you won't bump into me in the "gift" section of the Christian bookstore. What can I say? I'm an austere, logocentric kind of guy.

Which is why I find this so appealing:

Brad Thomas plugged the text of the NIV into Wordle.net to study word frequency in the various books of the Bible. The more common the word, the larger it appears in the resulting word cloud. And in addition to being informative, these clouds have an aesthetic quality to them, so he decided to make them available in both book and poster form. There's also a video showing each of the 66 word clouds making up the Bible:

For more info about the project, including how to order books and posters, check out Sixty-Six Clouds: Visualizing Word Frequency in the Bible. And here's a clever way to make use of the posters, courtesy of Chaplaincy Matters:

I am currently using 66 clouds to make a timeline around my office wall that will contain when the books of the Bible were written and other religious events over the centuries. I will finish the timeline with what our school has been doing over the past 5 years (missions etc). This will not only make a visually interesting and stimulating display but will be a great learning tool.

That probably takes more wall space than I have, but it sounds pretty cool.