Last Wednesday I went to a talk with Brian Foo on his process and the work he has done as a data visualization artist and computer scientist. He is now working as a data visualization scientist at the American Museum of Natural History and together with his team they designed the museum’s first permanent exhibit on climate change.
I actually went to AMNH not too long ago and had played with this particular exhibition. I remember thinking “oh, this is so interesting, it’s so different from most of the other museums’ interactive display” after the visit so I was very excited to learn more about Foo’s process.
He mentioned that he came from both computer science and visual arts background, but it was in the 2000s so he never really thought the two can be combined until he worked at New York Public Library and helped it presents 187K digital items in public domain visually. Foo started to play with the idea of how he can present the cold datas in ways that can evoke emotional impacts on their audiences.
Another project he worked on that I thought was interesting was the Green Book project. The Green Book was a guide published between 1936 and 1966 with a list of hotels, restaurants, and gas stations that black travellers were welcomed (during the time it was still legal to discriminate). So after you set your start location and destination, the website will provide you a route where you can travel safely according to the Green Book. The route will avoid areas that are hostile towards black people such as avoiding Texas completely and usually the route is far from the most efficient way to get to the destination. As I played around with the website and saw how inconvenient it was to travel from one play to another just because you had to avoid places that discriminated your skin colour actually made me feel the frustration and helplessness more directly.
Foo also worked on a lot of interesting projects regarding climate change such as the colouring book and of course, the exhibition at AMNH. I really like what he said in the talk that when he was creating these work, instead of forcing people to believe in something, he and his team will try to present datas and facts visually so that the audience can come up with conclusions themselves. And I completely agree with him that this is the more effective way of communication.
All About Process 