In Valence, individual pieces of information are represented visually according to their interactions with each other. Valence can be used for visualizing almost anything, from the contents of a book to website traffic, or for comparing different texts or data sources. The resulting visualization changes over time as it responds to new data. Instead of providing statistical information, Valence furnishes a qualitative feel for the perturbations in the data and builds a self-evolving map driven by patterns. Valence uses the properties of organic systems (things like growth, atrophy, adoption and metabolism) as methods for building representations that are based on the interaction of many simple rules in an attempt to achieve a more telling representation.