Data Art Journey: Let's Sketch, Create, and Inspire!
Also about data tattoos, data football players, and fairy tales data!
Hello! Thank you very much for subscribing to this newsletter! I'm thrilled to see so many people interested in the world of data art. I'll strive to share compelling and valuable content with you.
How to try data art?
Data art is an amazing field. I'll always admire the diverse approaches individuals take. And that's probably the strength. In today's world, uniqueness holds greater significance, and each of these projects embodies just that..
How to practice data art?
I will share here some simple practices on the topic of data art that are available to everyone - it does not matter that you do not know how to program or draw.
Exercise #1. Data Ink
Let’s look for patterns: Pinterest (search example). You will find something similar in the screenshot below:
Choose something that you can sketch with a pen in a notebook. It would be nice if these elements had different lengths or sizes. It was possible to change their location or the type of hatching. Here you already have simple visual attributes.
Think of the simplest data set - which you can write on paper by hand in five minutes - data about your family, your pets, your social network activity, your sporting achievements. Something that you can always find or remember. Add a few variables there (age, duration, range, type...)
And now the magic begins - just choose which of the variables you encrypt in your project - be inspired by the pattern you found, you don't have to follow it exactly, it's even better to differ a little from the source of inspiration.
Take a small piece of paper (no larger than A5) and sketch the characters encoding your data on it. Circles can be larger or smaller, lines shorter or longer, and crosses can be replaced by asterisks and leaves with flowers. You can mess up a few options while you're training, it's totally fine! Leave the version you are happy with, or look for another pattern for inspiration or other data - if it does not work at all.
Here's your beautiful, one-of-a-kind data art! It's truly special because it's unique! Send me to admire - I love such the simplest data arts, they hide a certain magic of sketch and personal small data! You can find my sketches on my website under Data Ink Practice.
Flowers & Numbers - News!
We have some news in the community - I want to tell you about them!
I'll start with this: one of our members, Anna, has crocheted an incredible graduation project! It took her more than a year, and recently it was shortlisted for the HSE University Design Award! I hope She finds the time and submits an article about this project to Nightingale - because the project is just incredible!
This is a physicalization of football data, made in the form of sixteen dolls of football players! The results of last year's football season are encrypted in this data! Here is the project's website with a detailed description of it!
World Data Art News
Oh my God, what a pompous title this section has! Well, now I have to match it - I want to talk about a bunch of cool projects (not all of them are new, but they deserve to be mentioned!)
Today you will find a selection of data tattoos!
I'll start with a project that's not new at all - tattoos change color when the wearer's blood sugar level changes! Incredible! The future! 😍 (although the news is so 2019). You can read about it here.
Why isn't everyone wearing these tattoos yet?! - I wondered. And then my colleague Roman Bunin shared the news that he got himself a data-art tattoo!
Now he always has four things on his arm: a boxplot by Tufty design, a dataset from Hans Rosling, the Doomsday Clock, and... a ruler with a 1.5 cm step and other cool stuff!
And now let's go back to even more ancient times - Maori tattoos also carry meanings, mostly representing personal achievements and talismanic protection for good luck. It would be extremely interesting to study them, as well as use them in data arts! You can read about its meaning here!
I would be very happy to receive your feedback, or if you also love data art and want to share something from this field (news or your project, idea - write to me!)
My works in progress
The Fairy Tale Formula! 🌟
I've recently delved into V.Propp's book "Morphology of the Folktale" and am excited to visualize something from it! Storytelling is a passion of mine, both in data visualization and in general. I'm now diving into the scientific foundation of fairy tales, developing a storytelling module, and thinking about comic book structures.
Propp studied a hundred fairy tales, ultimately uncovering a universal formula. If you love storytelling, you'll find this just as exciting. 😍
That’s it for today! See you next time!
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