WILD STYLE. DATA VISUALISATION IN PUBLIC SPACE STEFFEN FIEDLER
STEPHAN THIEL
2014
3-day workshop
methods & tools
data sculpture, graffiti, information bombing, field measurements, design process, interviews
partner
The Scientific Information Centre and Academic Library
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Experimental fusion of data visualisation methods and street art poetics in public space activism.
It may seem that data visualisation has little, if anything, in common with street art. The orderly and precise domain of statistics and analytical methods for interpreting data seem to stand in stark contrast to the spontaneous, often illegal and provocative actions in public space. The participants of the workshop staged by Studio NAND were encouraged to combine different data acquisition, processing and visualisation methods with the world of street art in order to bring data and art activism into the public space of Katowice. The most important stage of the rigorous design process regime was to define a problem in a selected part of the city or deal with the needs of a given group of residents. To this end, the participants had to ignore their beloved spreadsheets and comfortable workstations for a while and conduct field research to gain firsthand experience of the scale of the
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problem at hand, even if it meant going off into dark dodgy gates or penetrating into the concrete bed of a polluted river. After determining the project’s subject matter, the participants went on to acquire relevant data, either independently or from official repositories. At this point, they had to face the most difficult challenges: How to visualise the data in public space to reach the target audience? How to make the visualisation naturally fit in with the context of the explored part of the city? What means to use for the project to inspire public interest, and perhaps even controversy, in the hope of galvanising people into further action towards achieving social change?