This is neat: Clive Thompson built a little app that converts tabular data into a bar chart using houses from the video game Townscaper. Says Thompson:
A few days ago I was placing houses in a long row, with varying heights. And when I looked at the jagged result I thought:
Hey, that looks like a bar chart!
That made me wonder, hmmm, could I use Townscaper as a dataviz tool? Could I write code that takes data and turns it into a row of buildings?
See also Dan Malec's algorithmic Townscaper towns.