Who We Are: The Art of Using Data in Fiction

Video by Sarah Henry, Monxo Lopez, and Nate Lavey

More about the exhibition:
New York City is a dense, chaotic mosaic of some eight and a half million people, each with their own individual stories. How can we possibly understand and describe this endlessly complex collectivity – what we share and what distinguishes us? Census data has long been a resource used to draw out unexpected and provocative patterns, connections, and insights about who New Yorkers are since our nation’s first count in 1790.

In anticipation of the 2020 census, "Who We Are: Visualizing NYC by the Numbers" showcases work not just by data analysts and demographers, but also by cutting-edge contemporary artists and designers who use these tools to enliven and humanize statistics and to shed new light on how we understand our urban environment and ourselves. Together, these intriguing and varied works demonstrate the power and importance of numbers in helping us understand who we are.

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That's quite interesting! That book was really fun to read - the painting of holes through which the city breathed (in the original short), the great enemy with its foreign sounding name, the understanding of cops ecologically, as a parasitic infestation. Oh, and the fight scene, with all of the steal girders, fangs and claws. I liked that part. And the train! Ahh, the magic of public transportation. An excellent book - perhaps I'll pick it up again soon.
I'd love to hear more about how that data was gathered, and then how in specific it was built into New York - where certain bits of data found were then woven in. Is there an accompanying bit of writing somewhere that talks more about this? Some back pages in the book, or an article? It would be cool to read about.
And what about São Paulo, and Hong Kong? I can only imagine they will be further ramified in the next books, of course. Just for the first one, thouhg, I wonder - outside of data science, what research went into their sculpting? Making individuals to represent an entire city - it sounds like something you'd want to do very carefully, and after much research. It would be lovely to read about all of that some day, perhaps once the series is done.


Anyhow, many thanks to N.K. Jemisin. She is cool.