Nostalgic Deep Dives

Experiments by Joey Cato that revisit personal, local, and pop-culture history through maps, video, photography, data, and interactive media.

Paris, Texas — Before the Fire preview
Interactive history map · 2022

Paris, Texas — Before the Fire

Century-old Sanborn fire-insurance maps stitched together and georeferenced to reveal Paris, Texas, shortly before the devastating fire of 1916.

Deep Nostalgia with Movie Posters preview
AI animation experiment · 2021

Deep Nostalgia with Movie Posters

Classic eighties and nineties movie posters animated with deep-learning tools, then composited back into their original frames with Photoshop.

Rediscovering History with Photoshop preview
Historic panoramas · 2021

Rediscovering History with Photoshop

Panoramic views of downtown Paris reconstructed from panning shots in historic films recorded in 1927 and 1964.

Circle of Life preview
Interactive data visualization · 2020

Circle of Life

A circular timeline comparing the ages and lifespans of past Academy Award winners using Wikidata, SPARQL, D3, and HTML canvas.

Bandersnatch Demo preview
Interactive recreation · 2018

Bandersnatch Demo

A playable HTML5 Canvas recreation of the fictional early-eighties computer game at the center of Netflix’s Bandersnatch.

Road Trips Reenacted preview
Then-and-now video · 2018

Road Trips Reenacted

Camcorder journeys through Paris, Texas, from 2003 recreated fifteen years later and synchronized into a split-screen comparison with FFmpeg.

Paris in 1981 preview
Interactive local history · 2016

Paris in 1981

A digitized Paris, Texas, telephone directory transformed into an interactive snapshot of local people, businesses, and places in 1981.