PROJECT #06 DATA PORTRAIT

I AM WE

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Description

Brief: Create a data portrait out of a personal habit of yours.

Data used: This sketch depicts the people I have had a conversation with in the last seven days, and encodes how long that conversation was.

Concept: It is based on a quote from the chinese Sci-Fi novel Invisible Planets (which has also been quoted on the Day0 setting in the piece), which alludes to how we are never the same after meeting someone. We leave with a bit of them and they leave with a bit of us. So if I were to draw my portrait, I wouldn't draw me but all the people whose bits make me. I am a chimera of all the people who have coloured my world. I am a We.

Process

Step 01 Data Collection

I took note of who I'd met and how long I conversed with them at the end of each day. The times are not accurate to the minute as they were also based on memory (i.e. how long I perceived the conversation to be).

Step 02 First Sketch

I was at first imagining some sort of interaction where as each person enters the day (each person being a circle), a small reflection of them also appears in the centre circle (representing me).

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I wasn't sure if I liked the visual aesthetic this was turning out to be, so I revisited the visualising by sketching it on Procreate again.

Step 03 Second Sketch

I then changed it to the whole canvas encompassing my portrait, and different people spiraling in and colouring my world differently each day (or each instance). My sketch used thin spirals, but when I coded it, I liked the large blob like shapes the circles where leaving behind.

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Some things still need refining: like the fact that the names sometimes leaves trails (as a result of the background being in setup, which is necessary for the circles' colours to leave an impression on the canvas). I also received feedback that the text on the centre persisting is a distraction so in the final sketch, it is only drawn on Day0, and the rest of the content is drawn on top of it.

Credits

This project used the typeface Nanum Gothic Coding by Sandoll licensed under Open Font License and the quote from Invisible Planets by Hao Jingfang, translated by Ken Liu.