Personal Data Visualization

Catalog description

We produce caches of data within our networked lives, from social media interactions to mass surveillance systems, mostly to the benefit of corporate or state entities. These data sets also reveal a story about us, although sometimes abstract and obfuscated. Through a combination of lectures and workshops, we will explore how data has been used, both historically and contemporaneously, to control, manipulate and influence the body and how artists, writers and activists have responded to issues of privacy, representation, gender and identity. We will look at how our physical, social and personal digital presence is reduced to data, surveilled and analyzed through our online behavior, mobile devices, CCTV, 3D scanning, computer vision and machine learning algorithms. Throughout the semester, students will learn how to code for the web while collecting and visualizing data about themselves to form a personalized narrative about how they interact with these spaces and how these spaces might see them.