This weeks lecture was on the art of information, Paul talked about a lot more designers and infographic designers to give us more inspiration for our own infographics. This was helpful because I feel like you can never have too many examples to look at. He stated with a quite ‘Art is built around data’ , then giving examples of a few books that he advised we should look at – ‘A touch of code’ and ‘data driven’.

The first artist he showed was Brendan Dawes, we have looked at him before but it’s always nice to get a refresher.Paul looked at his project ‘carefully everywhere descending’ which is wildly popular. This project contains flowing lines with real time data which is very interesting but also very aesthetically pleasing to look at, I felt myself getting almost hypnotised from all of the lines intertwining etc. The image below shows this project and just how beautiful it is, this highlighted to me how mesmerising data can actually be

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Paul also showed ‘E-Cloud’. This was interesting to see infographics used in an art exhibition/ practical setting for public viewing. I thought the images Paul showed were really pretty and the idea is so innovative, no wonder this is so popular and well celebrated. The ‘cloud’ is made from tiles that reflects the weather in different countries round the world, the ‘ecloud’ is located in an airport therefore the information is relevant and helpful to people passing by. This company turns what could be seen as boring or mundane and turned it into something relaxing and beautiful.

Klarna is another company that Paul showed us because of its modern take on infographics. They have a real life data wall that has a nice hierarchy. Paul said that this wall has nice data movement and has nice placement of the bar charts and cubes as well. He also said that the simplicity of the wall is great and really works. He also remarked that the scaling, colour and font choice was nice, these are all elements I have to consider within my own infographic and ensure that my design is simplistic and effective.

Paul then went into the Big Data section of the lecture and discussed a wide range of well known brands that use our everyday data. for example Netflix, Uber and Map box. All use data for this business. Netflix uses our data and watching patterns to recommend our next movies and Uber has created a large uber map from the data in which people have ordered Ubers to and from etc.

Jer Thorop was mentioned also, he is a teacher from NYC and is a Data artist therefor he is very well known in the data world. Paul recommend his book ‘Living in data’ and says that if we have time we should look into it.

The next part of the lecture was interesting because we got to watch some videos and ted talks on data visualisation. The ted talk was old but still helpful in what I am learning about this semester. It was on Aaron Koblin and his creation of an interactive projects he had made. He made an interactive music video which I have never seen before, even if this was years ago it still seems very modern to me.

Aaron also talked about how he conducted a project called the Sheep project, and he got so many people around the world to take part in, he asked ted all to draw a sheep on screen and he collected so many different entries all of sheep. This was amusing and also interesting because it showed how data can be collected, and all vary. Another project that interested me was the Johnny Cash one, he and another designer created this moving illustration Johnny Cash music video were they got so many artists involved in drawing one frame each of the video. This then made the illustrations move and change constantly – which was very satisfying to watch in a way. It was nice to see a different sort of data a more interactive approach.

Another more art installation type project involving data that Paul showed us was Janet Echelman’s work. She is a sculptor but makes these data installations around cities by displaying data onto fibres on a net and the data is connected to this. The images below are like the ones Paul showed and they were very mesmerising. It was like the data was dancing in the sky and I thought they looked very pretty yet futuristic, I imagine this installations were every more amazing in real life.

What did I learn from this lecture:

• That there can be many different approaches to data visualisation and data can be shown interactively and even in art installations.
• That art can literally be built around data.
• I learned some new and innovative ways to present data – moving cubes etc.
• I learned that simplicity is very important earn showing data so it can be easily read and understood.