I’m in Bengaluru to attend the VizChitra conference. I got to meet a lot of my favorite people—Apoorv, Bianca, Thejesh GN, and Rahul Poruri—after a long gap. I also met Anand C with whom I had interacted virtually over teaching mathematics with art. Several such art-science intersection conversations happened during the conference, and I’m very happy about it :)
Within that intersection, Aditi Bhat performed the hula hoop on stage to present the climate change data viscerally. “Data Visceralization” is a new concept I learned from her performance today. It means you present data in such a way that it appeals to your emotions and physical experiences, beyond intellect.
There was a lot of discussion on the future of data visualization due to AI. S Anand showed us in a live demo how he could do a complex data scraping exercise and create dozens of visuals and insights using LLMs. I think one takeaway from all the AI discussion was that AI can definitely create hundreds of visuals and insights. But human taste/emotion/values would be crucial in deciding what to choose out of those hundreds (or this is my wishful thinking). So, maybe, as machines take over these works, we can focus on becoming better humans.
We are doing a workshop tomorrow on narrating air pollution stories of your city. You can book tickets here: Chitra Lekha
I’ve built my first Scrolly Tale using D3.js and Scrollama. It was fun to build it. I’ve discovered a few more advanced and amazing scrolly tales this week. Here is one: Votes in a Name.
I spoke to my college mate Nikshep. He completed his Masters in Environmental Sciences with a focus on valuating ecosystem services. There is one interesting thing he said, and it resonated with me. I’ll paraphrase them:
Everyone can write about the restoration of forests, but very few can actually restore a forest.
It reminded of this news article
Even this is a skill we forgot to learn and teach. There are hardly any courses on it. No one teaches them in schools and colleges. So, even if there is money and opportunity to restore, we are unable to do it.
Meghana told me about the animation short film - The Man Who Planted Trees- loosely in this context. Hope it’ll be a good weekend watch to you!