in | un | data: humanizing data viz
Jina Valentine
2 week course || PRINT 656 001 || 3 credit hours
Siri and Alexa know you better than your mom. Amazon reminds you to buy her a birthday present from her wish list. Google maps thinks you should try that new Thai restaurant because it’s Thursday and you always order Thai on Thursday. Your Target coupons predicted x y z. In this dystopian era, all of human experience is quantifiable, trackable, and subjected to data-driven marketing techniques. In news media, data visualization attempts to qualify quantitative data to craft compelling stories, affect legislation, or generate support for a cause. However detailed the visualizations may be, they often fail to convey the lived experience of the events or phenomena that they illustrate. Data humanism is the study of the disconnect that exists between quantitative data and lived experience. Artists examining and representing this data can offer new ways of imagining those connections between life in numbers and map points and sensual experience. In this course, students will examine various data sets related to their individual interests. We will investigate ways to see how our lives and searches are tracked online through search history analytics, google maps analytics, and various other metrics; we will look at census data and cultural data related to sociopolitical issues; we will see how data is organized and made available to the public through various online archives including Wikipedia and the Library of Congress. The course is not media specific, but will focus on drawing, painting, collage techniques, and interventions in public space (a lá the Situationist International). Virtual guest presentations will include researchers in media theory, programmers from the Wikimedia Foundation, data visualization specialists, and artists who transform data visualizatio
FACULTY
Jina Valentine
LITERACY TESTS: RORSCHACH
iron gall ink on paper made from Sea Isle Cotton shirts (10 in series)
14 x 20” irregular
2016
Jina Valentine’s interdisciplinary practice is informed by the intuitive strategies of American folk artists and traditional craft techniques, and interweaves histories latent within found texts, objects, narratives, and spaces. She has exhibited widely, both in her independent work and with her collaborative project, Black Lunch Table. Valentine has participated in numerous residencies including the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Santa Fe Art Institute, Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, and the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. She has received grants from the North Carolina Arts Council, Creative Capital, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, and Art Matters. Jina received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, her MFA from Stanford University, and is an Assistant Professor of Printmedia at the SAIC.