Processing Thoughts
I'm working on an application for the Processing Foundation's Fellowship this year. The theme is Data Storytelling at it feels too aligned with where my head has been this last few years ( ) to not apply. Also in the spirit of APPLY TO EVERYTHING (hat tip to Taeyoon). I recognize that at this moment, this application feels like an insurmountable task, like staring up from the valley to the crags looming above you. Might as well turn around and you'll make it home in time for a cup of tea. I've been at this game (aka living) long enough though, that I'm wise to certain tricks of the mind.
This trick I might call the trick of the first time. When a task is unknown and you have no experience with it, you have no reliable way to estimate its difficulty. There is no map you have inside your head. It's an issue of perception. The first time is always the scariest and the hardest. I hear that there are some mythical creatures for whom "beginner's luck" or "overconfidence" provides a psychological forcefield with which they can barrel through to competence but ––alas, that ain't me.
I want to apply to this fellowship both because I would love to have a reason to focus on my own data storytelling project and the access and exposure to other folks in the creative coding community. But my secondary reason is that I want to get my first time applying to something in ages over. To remind myself that I can sit down and come up with a creative idea. That I can shape and communicate it. That getting a No isn't any kind of heartbreak. It's just a mark of effort you've put in. It's the miles on your journey.
As I was researching the fellowship I realized that my original plan of pitching something to do with the class I teach (Drawing Data By Hand) wouldn't quite match the mark for this fellowship. More than previous years they seem interested in individual creative projects rather than educational material. I also realized that what I am craving is a chance to work on my own creative projects, not to enable other people's. I love teaching and developing this class, but I miss the feeling of creating something new that hasn't existed before.
So I need to come up with a data project. In no particular ranking and with no claims to their virtue here are a few I was thinking about tonight. I'm going to spend the next few days letting my brain simmer and then by Thursday I will choose one and spend next weekend writing it up.*
*I realize that a lot of my project ideas are influenced by own notions of data which absolutely contains qualitative data. In the cast for the fellowship they gave as a definition 'something that can be measured' so we'll see if I can come up with anything that is more measured.
Idea 1
Build on my SFPC 2018 project! My SFPC 2018 showcase project was a multi-component reflection on personal feelings about the climate. There were three components:
A. A sandclock that simulated greenhouse gases being added to the atmosphere over a spedup time representing my best-case life-span. What I found compelling about this clock was the way it existed in time. Visitors might encounter it at the beginning of their gallery visit but the piece unfolded through time, by the time they returned to it it would have changed. Time would have moved on. By mapping the time to my lifespan, I meant to demonstrate the stakes of inaction and how crucial this moment in time is.
The sand poured over a moving globe (yes, yes, on the nose, but that's my style babes). This meant that eventually the sand would begin to cover the globe and the motor would have to do more and more work in order to keep spinning, eventually it would stop from the sheer mass weighing against it 👃🏼. I also knew that at least some visitors would begin to anthropomorphize the efforts of the spinning motor in a way that might evoke empathy with its struggle. In this moment as I say this I am thinking of the Pixar Lamp, Lumo.
In my original vision for this piece, it would be a room arranged with furniture and other detritus of life which would be slowly submerged in sand trickling down from a net in the ceiling. Now none of that necessarily makes sense with the p5 ask, but I want to spend some time thinking about what was at the heart of this piece and whether that could be transformed in some way.
Hmm...The heart of it was probably quite simply: if you are alive right now, you will live through the critical moments which determine what life looks like on earth for the next thousands of years. It can be ignored, but that does not change the inexorable drip. B. The second data component was a family tree of my ancestors going 4 generations back. It had the birth/death of each family member and the PPM (the measure of greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere) at those events. This was about further contextualizing the acceleration of climate change and its cause. It was also a way to humanize me in order to increase the impact of the sand clock. One of my favorite parts of this piece was the section for my own future children (if I am so lucky). I named these future progeny but instead of a single PPM number they had three numbers, each representing one of the possible projection paths forward depending on how much action we take as a gloabl community. This was again to emphasize that this moment, is more than simply a moment of precipatant disaster. It is also a moment of agency. C. The third component was a series of optimistic "future scenarios" which listed cultural, technological, and ecological changes that would be positive in our attempts at climate mitigation. For example one I remember was in 2025, a vegan burger beats a cow burger in a blind taste test by a panel of chefs. Or in 2052 it becomes a cultural norm to plant a tree in honor of a new child. This was again, meant to speak to agency and to helping people envision how to move forward.
Idea 2
Years ago I started a mini interactive fiction project called "Lost Coast", the conceit being that there is a beach where all the things we lose are left by the tide. It was a "game" in which you wander along a shoreline and find random objects that have been lost, some physical (a spoon), some not (the sound of your grandmohter's voice). The idea for that project was always that it would be something that people could contribute to. An homage to projects like the Museum of Broken Relationships or Queering the Map––crowd-based narrative explorations of fundamental human experiences. From what I heard at the fellowship Q&A this would not necessarily count as "data", but I still like the idea. Perhaps the experience of the coast, the weather could be influenced by data from the objects (type) or visitors.
Idea 3
This would be a small tool built in p5.js to help people make interactive timelines with different scales of time: deep time (10,000 years), micro time (5s), and perhaps even explorations of circular experiences of time. (like THREADS, Ilona, this makes me think of you and the way in which themes and ideas echo back and forth throughout your life and work). This feels fun both for what it might help people make but also for getting to research and think about time. :D
Okay that's it for tonight folks. Thank you for your graciousness in reading this post which was leaning towards incoherent. <3