For many outside of the scientific community, big data and the forms it takes, such as statistical lists, spreadsheets and graphs, often seem abstract and unintelligible. This book investigates how digital fabrication and traditional making approaches are being used to present data in newly engaging and interesting ways. The first part of the book introduces the basic premise of the data object and the concept of making digital data into a physical form. Contributors cover topics such as biometrics, new technology, the economics of data and open and community uses of data. The second part presents a selection of exemplar forms and contexts for the application of data-objects, such as smart surfaces, smart cities, augmented reality techniques and next generation technical interfaces that blend physical and digital elements. Making Data delivers the importance and likely future prevalence of physical representations of data. It explores the creative methods, processes, theories and cultural histories of making physical representations of information and proposes that the making of data into physical objects is the next important development in the data visualisation phenomenon.
For many outside of the scientific community, big data and the forms it takes, such as statistical lists, spreadsheets and graphs, often seem abstract and unintelligible. This book investigates how digital fabrication and traditional making approaches are being used to present data in newly engaging and interesting ways. The first part of the book introduces the basic premise of the data object and the concept of making digital data into a physical form. Contributors cover topics such as biometrics, new technology, the economics of data and open and community uses of data. The second part presents a selection of exemplar forms and contexts for the application of data-objects, such as smart surfaces, smart cities, augmented reality techniques and next generation technical interfaces that blend physical and digital elements. Making Data delivers the importance and likely future prevalence of physical representations of data. It explores the creative methods, processes, theories and cultural histories of making physical representations of information and proposes that the making of data into physical objects is the next important development in the data visualisation phenomenon.
Foreword, Karel van der Waarde (Graphic Design Consultant, Belgium) Introduction, Ian Gwilt (University of South Australia) Part One: Theories 1. Data Objects Thinking With Your Hands, Adrien Segal (California College of the Arts, USA) 2. Shifting Data between the Material and the Virtual is Not an Immaterial Matter, Dew Harrison (University of Wolverhampton, UK) 3. Data as Environment: Physicalization Strategies for Communicating Environmental Data, Dietmar Offenhuber (Northeastern University, USA) and Laura Perovich (MIT, USA) 4. Designing Explanations of Data-based Interactions in Socio-Technical Systems, Aaron Fry (Parsons School of Design, USA) 5. Moving Data: Visualizing Human and Nonhuman Movement Artistically, Michele Barker and Anna Munster (University of New South Wales, Australia) Part Two: Practices 6. Uncanny Landscapes: Experiential Encounters with Ecological Data, Zoë Sadokierski, Monica Monin and Andrew Burrell (University of Technology Sydney, Australia) 7. Exploring Digital-material Hybridity in the Postdigital Museum, Daniela Petrelli and Nick Dulake (Sheffield Hallam University, UK) 8. Socio-material Translations of Data and Value(s), Bettina Nissen (University of Edinburgh, UK) 9. Personal Data Manifestation: A Tangible Poetics of Data, Giles Lane (Proboscis, UK) and George Roussos (Birkbeck, University of London, UK) 10. Data and Emotion: The Climate Change Object, Karin von Ompteda (OCAD, Canada) Part Three: Techniques 11. Hybrid Data Constructs: Interacting with Biomedical Data in Augmented Spaces, Daniel F. Keefe, Bridger Herman, Jung Who Nam, Daniel Orban and Seth Johnson (University of Minnesota, USA) 12. Sonic Data Physicalization, Stephen Barrass (University of Canberra, Australia) 13. Making with Climate Data: Materiality, Metaphor and Engagement, Mitchell Whitelaw and Geoff Hinchcliffe (Australian National University) 14. Waterfalls as a Form of AI-based Feedback for Creativity Support, Georgi V. Georgiev and Yazan Barhoush (University of Oulu, Finland) 15. Data as Action: Constructing Dynamic Data Physicalizations, Jason Alexander (University of Bath, UK) Part Four: Trajectories 16. Making Data: The Next Generation, Ian Gwilt and Aaron Davis (University of South Australia)
This is the first work to explore the theory, history and processes of physical representations of data.
Ian Gwilt is Professor of Design at the University of South Australia.
A valuable counterpoint to the popular idea that data visualization
is beautiful, this book provides a thoughtful and pragmatic
position on material and experiential manifestations of data. It
contains an array of perspectives on the subject, including the
history of data’s material manifestations and the challenges of
achieving human-centred design with increasingly complex
socio-technical problems.
*Peter A. Hall, Reader in Graphic Design, UAL Camberwell, Chelsea
and Wimbledon, UK*
This is a fascinating anthology of fresh thinking on how we can
understand our world through data. Materialist, sensory and
phenomenological approaches to knowledge — long practiced in the
Arts — are now having increasing impact on other disciplines. This
book provides numerous examples and ideas on how materializing
information can lead to more nuanced understandings and heightened
engagement with data. Covering theory, practice and methodologies,
this is an expansive and unique collection on the materialization
of digital information
*Jon McCormack, SensiLab Director, Monash University, Australia*
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