Week 13

A busy week of deconstructing SVGs, relief printing, planning our final major project, gathering context about challenges women entrepreneurs face, studying the visceral qualities of a leaf, and going on a data dérive.

In an introductory session to D3, we focused on drawing and understanding SVGs.

We did a quick exercise to get started on our final major project proposal, which I've been looking forward to since applying to the program.

We had a briefing session as part of a collaborative project with UN Women to understand the challenges women face in entrepreneurship. I am excited about working on this brief alongside my creative peers. Peter Levin’s Successful Teamwork has been a great starting point to understand the ethos of teamwork and collaboration in an academic setting. As a group, we visualised the skills that each of us possessed by using Lego blocks as an analogy for indicating strength in combination.

Finally, the Data Visceralisation session I have been eagerly waiting for. As an experiment, our team depicted the temperature levels in the UK as a soundscape using audio samples from leaves. We studied the leaf with our senses and explored how it could possibly embody our data in non-visual ways.

We arrived at a sonic vocabulary by touching and feeling the leaves and recording through sound attributes like soft, rough, dry, fresh, etc. I wonder how this could be extended to understand drought levels globally.

In the spirit of dérive, we went on a data walk to study sounds in our neighbourhood. The goal was to keep an open mind and record our observations of the various sources of sounds we captured.

More on this next week!