“Dear Data” drawing project of Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec
“Dear Data” is a book that contains the data drawing project of Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec, who collected their hand drawings on postcards that they used to send to each other. These two became friends by collecting and drawing their personal data and sending it to each other through postcards. They were inspired to note down and draw their activities and thoughts to visualize their experiences and translating them into information. The postcards that they sent contained weekly data on one side and keys to the drawings on the other side. The keys were a form of code to enable the recipient to decipher the drawings. Their communication technique was a form of analog approach to data, but its primary purpose was to connect with one another.
Summary of the Book
Stefanie and Giorgia recall their fascination with the collection and organization of information around them. Stefanie’s fascination developed when she used to help her father fill out baseball scorecards while Giorgia’s fascination developed when she began collecting and organizing items into transparent folders. When these two grew up, they worked as information designers. Giorgia lived in New York while Stefanie grew up in Denver. These two spent 52 weeks collecting weekly data and representing the data in the form of drawings with legends to help interpret their drawings. On the first week, they were excited but slightly scared that they would not be able to create compelling visual representations. They made visual drawings of clocks and time while incorporating details of their activities during various times of the day. Giorgia’s postcard contained information on how to read the symbols she used for time and attributes that were important during particular time intervals, such as being late or being woken up by the alarm. In addition, her postcard contained a legend that explained the meaning of each symbol she used on her drawings. On the other hand, Stefanie had an artistic image of lines resembling arrows. She highlighted the instances where she checked the time using devices such as tablets, laptops, or a phone while her legend contained the meaning of each line in her drawing. Stefanie and Giorgia used the same method in the subsequent weeks to explain their experiences, such as those in public transport, expressing gratitude by saying thank you, buying items, physical contact, and complaining. When they reached the ninth week of communicating through postcards, Stefanie got a chance to travel to North America due to work purposes. The travel would allow her to meet with Giorgia for the third time. They were nervous if their physical meeting would be as friendly as their postcard communication. They decided to track their interactions with data and people, and this advanced their drawings to be interpreted as data since they mentioned that they had been ‘writing with data.’ As their communication advanced, it helped them learn about each other’s personalities. Stefanie and Giorgia got the desire to learn more drawing techniques and began representing their data using collage at week 20. As they continued their weekly tasks, they included annotations in their postcards as a new form of data. They then represented experiences related to their five senses and concluded by surveying their phones.
Analysis
Stefanie and Giorgia were able to identify data using patterns of familiar objects around them. Their experience implies that aspects of life, such as the natural world and digital existence, can be mapped, interpreted, and measured as data. This concept has the potential to inspire students about the simplicity in collecting, analyzing, and visualizing data despite its bulky nature. This story also inspires artists to capture aesthetic elements from their interests or desires and transform them into art or design. In one of the postcards, Stefanie wrote that data made them more human and helped them connect with others and herself at a deeper level. This statement is true since data requires the use of human senses to perceive and interpret data. Also, the fact that they represented their emotional data on week 11 gave them have an in-depth understanding of their feelings so that they could represent them in their postcards accurately. Stefanie had also tracked some of her desires in week 13, such as the desires of self-centeredness. Their experiences also give insights about mapping. For example, they mapped activities which they deemed as productive despite their different interpretations. Mapping provides a foundation for abstract art, and from the book, abstract productivity should be unique, allowing an individual to express themselves. The book emphasizes the importance of observation in data collection, interpretation, and artistic design. Observation is a technique that brings originality to art since there is no point of reference. Instead, there is the existence of different attitudes that provides information from different points of view. The introduction of patterns in Giorgia’s data gave Stefanie a new challenge to recognize and identify the meaning of patterns. This scenario prompts us to learn how to identify trends during data collections. A pattern is a repetition of a unit or a visual element; therefore, finding a repetitive unit in data is vital to identifying trends in data. Furthermore, patterns provide links between two or more variables, which is essential in statistical analysis. The use of patterns in art helps an artist come up with creative works by manipulating a repetitive unit. The repetitive units in patterns are versatile; thus, they provide artists with various ideas. Some of the patterns that they used on their postcards represented their feelings and perceptions of as distractions in their workplace. Some of the patterns that they used expressed music, and they achieved this by using rhythm and movement in their patterns. The two ladies also introduced the concept of perspective when representing their views of their respective cities. For example, Georgia drew how postcards arrive through Stefanie’s mail slot using directional lines. This technique is called perspective in art, and it is used to represent three-dimensional forms.
Conclusion
“Dear Data” outlined the correspondence between two information designers through a set of 52 hand-written postcards that traversed from London to New York. The postcards give a glimpse of how their friendship developed, and the whole book expands on how they got meaning from what they had collected during the 52 weeks. This book has the potential to inspire students and non-data experts to work with simple data to connect with others or oneself at a deeper level. Stefanie’s and Giorgia’s decision to use data gathering techniques to inspire themselves to try new things despite their distance creatively implied the importance of data in our daily lives. Their efforts to learn and express unique ideas using data can be used as motivation in art interpretations and statistical analysis of data.