Practices like data mining and data scraping are uncovering more of the world’s raw information than ever before: seriously big data. Are we going to do something constructive with it, or just drown?
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“It’s imperative that we create more useful and compelling ways of communicating the data,” says Michael Golec, an SAIC professor who worked with the students. “Most forms of data representation date from the late 19th or early 20th century. Only now are we inventing new ways of depicting data. It’s an interesting moment. We’re taking USA Today and making it life-sized.”
Two of the installations are based on existing data sets collected by Northwestern professors. Luis Amaral’s numbers track where Chicago’s high school students chose to enroll; the Data Viz students compiled numbers from other factors—household income, availability of public transportation—that may have influenced their decisions. Danny Abrams contributed genealogical information for ten Korean families over the past 500 years; the students figured out ways to represent that information visually.
Reception Fri 8/16, 4-6 PM Through 9/13 at LeRoy Neiman Center Lobby, 37 S. Wabash; through 8/22 at Gallery X, 280 S. Columbus Dr.
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