We are happy to announce we organized the panel Making with Data (And Beyond) at the ACM CHI 2023 conference. The panel was scheduled for Tuesday, April 25 at 9:00 to 10:30 (new date!) in Hamburg.
The panelists Kim Sauvé, Moritz Stefaner, Alice Thudt, and Eva Hornecker discussed contemporary practices and envisioned ways to make physical representations of data in the future, and explore the intersection of data visualization, design, fabrication, and tangible interaction. Ekene Ijeoma and Dietmar Offenhuber weren’t able to join live but shared their perspective via videos.
Thanks everyone for attending this stimulating and thought-provoking panel discussion!
More information at the CHI program.
Panel abstract
In this panel, we will discuss the practice of Making with Data — the practice of creating physical artifacts that represent a dataset. This topic lies at the intersection of several CHI communities: data visualization, fabrication, and tangible interaction. Our goal is to discuss contemporary practices, but also to envision future ways that we might continue to make physical representations of data in the future, given emerging fabrication techniques, data representation practices, and desired interactions and experiences with data.
Oehlberg, L., Willet, W., Huron, S., Nagel, T., Thudt, A., Ijeoma, E., Offenhuber, D., Hornecker, E. (2023) Making with Data (and Beyond). CHI EA '23: CHI'23 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Check out our panel proposal.
The panelists
Kim Sauvé is an Associate Researcher in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) at the University of Bath. She recently finished her PhD titled “Towards Context-Senstivie Physicalization Design” at Lancaster University, UK, where she delved into the impact of physicality and contextual factors on physicalizations. Through her research, she gained a deeper understanding of how physicalizations are experienced and interacted with in physical 3D space. She specializes in Research through Design, applying design practice and developing interactive research prototypes to generate new insights for human-data interaction. She has worked on projects like LOOP, an ambient artifact visualizing personal activity data, and Econundrum, a data sculpture to promote reflection and awareness on the climate impact of personal dietary choices.
As a self-employed “Truth and Beauty Operator”, Moritz Stefaner keeps chasing the perfect shape for information. With a background in Cognitive Science and Interface Design, his work beautifully balances analytical and aesthetic aspects in mapping complex phenomena to support data–driven decision making. Moritz has helped clients like the OECD, Google News Initiative, Salesforce, the World Economic Forum, Deutsche Bahn and the Max Planck Research Society to find insights and beauty in large and complex data sets. He is the record winner of the Kantar Information is Beautiful awards and his work has been exhibited at Venice Biennale of Architecture, SIGGRAPH, Max Planck Science Gallery, Fondation EDF, and Ars Electronic. As a writer, co-host of the Data Stories podcast, and sought-after keynote speaker and workshop facilitator, Moritz Stefaner continues to excite more and more people about the magic that can emerge when art and science connect deeply.
Alice Thudt is a freelance data visualization designer. She received her PhD in Computational Media Design from the University of Calgary. Her PhD research focused on individual meaning-making with personal data through diverse reflective and expressive practices. As part of her research she explored physicalization and data craft as a means for self-reflection and expression. She has further integrated personal data into her own creative practice as a hobby ceramicist. In her series “Life in Clay”, she created functional everyday objects, decorated with visual patterns based on personal data as mementos of cherished relationships and Experiences.
Ekene Ijeoma researches how social, political, and environmental systems affect people and develops sound, video, sculpture, installation, and performance using poetic and computational strategies. Across these various media, his work exposes the systems unjustly affecting people and engages people in communally changing these systems. His data-driven artworks sonify and materialize data on overlooked aspects of sociopolitical systems through cultural artifacts. For example, Deconstructed Anthems, a series of compositions, sonifys the increasing loss of Black Americans to prisons and jails by repeating the Star-Spangled Banner and removing notes based on incarceration rates. Similarly, Wage Islands, a series of sculptures, materializes the increasing costs of housing for poor New Yorkers by submerging a topographic map of the city in a water tank based on housing-to-income ratios. His work has been presented by Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Contemporary Art Museum of Houston, The Kennedy Center, Museum of the City of New York, Neuberger Museum of Art, Storefront for Art and Architecture and Museum of Modern Art among others. He is an Assistant Professor at MIT and the Director of Poetic Justice Group at Media Lab.
Dietmar Offenhuber is Associate Professor and Chair of Art + Design at Northeastern University. His research focuses on environmental information and evidence construction, their material/sensory aspects and social implications. He wrote the award winning monograph Waste is Information – Infrastructure Legibility and Governance (MIT Press). His forthcoming monograph at MIT Press examines the idea of Autographic Data, which include physi cal traces and self-inscribing phenomena such as tree rings. He theorizes trace-phenomena as non-symbolic forms of data that play a central role in practices of evidence construction from the sciences to grassroots activism. In the context of data physicalization, designers can use autographic phenomena to make processes such as climate change and environmental pollution experiential
Eva Hornecker is a Professor of HCI at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. She is one of the initiators of the ACM TEI conference. Her research sits at the intersection of technology, design and social sciences, with a specific interest in the roles of tangibility, materiality, and embodiment, and in human sense-making and collaboration. One of her research interests in the past decade has been the role of data representation modality on user experience and the user experience of data physicalization. She and her group have taught a number of creative project-based courses on data physicalization over the last few years, and reflected on the process of data curation as well on how engaging with physicalization can change our view of what data are.