My nephew’s wife (my bonus niece) showed me a fabulous book the other day called Dear Data (by Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec). It tells the story of two graphic artists and data crunchers who came up with a very innovative year-long project. Each week they would choose a different bit of personal data to track and at the end of the week they would represent the data graphically on a postcard and send it to each other. It was fascinating!
As a person with both left brain and right brain tendencies, I knew this was something I had to try too. This summer my daughters and I are doing various art projects that we don’t have time for during the school year (like a neighborhood chalk festival!) and we decided it would be fun to track data with friends and family. We decided on four questions we wanted to ask and we decided that the resulting data graphics would go up in our gallery at the end of the summer. (A year or so ago we started putting art and poetry up on our fence and calling it the Plein Air Word Gallery.)
If you would like to participate, here are the rules:
* You may do any question whenever you would like but you must track the data for seven consecutive days and you must only track ONE question at a time (#3 is an exception to this rule because it is more of a snapshot of one moment in time)
* Your graphic representation must fit on an 8.5”x11” size paper (unless you do your own laminating and bring it to me)
* No profanity or otherwise offensive material will make it on the fence (this is a family neighborhood with lots of little kids in our audience).
* Only photos or photocopies can hang on the fence (no original art) because it gets moldy and ruined by the weather.
* Bring me a copy of your original graphic (laminated or in a sheet protector) to
o My house (if you know me that well)
o Speak For Yourself Open Mic on Thursday Nights at 7:30 pm (if you’re in the Provo area)
o Speakforyourselfopenmic AT gmail DOT com (if you don’t have a way to get it to me in person)
The Questions:
1. Pieces of trash picked up
2. People who smile back when you smile at them
3. Clothes you own and where are right NOW (no cheating)
4. Small acts of service done by you or observed in others (FYI, this one counts for LDS Young Women’s Personal Progress! Good Works #1)
Here’s information from the book that the authors included if anyone wanted to try their data experiment (like we do!):
For examples and even MORE information about the project, check out their website: Dear Data, the project
Marianne Hales 