The Data Culture Group builds collaborative projects to interrogate our datafied society with a focus on rethinking participation and power in data processes. Our work generally fall into the categories of applied computational journalism or creative data representation. Led by Professor Rahul Bhargava, we are a part of the College of Arts, Media and Design at Northeastern University.
Recent Blog Posts
We think out loud, sharing our process and research via blog posts. Consider our blog as our open notebook, full of sketches and under-construction ideas.
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Is it windier, or is it just me? Boston is slowly emerging from its pandemic winter of isolation. As evidence mounts on the relative low risk of being outdoors and acquiring COVID, and with spring weather unfurling its warming embrace, people are rediscovering the outdoors. We’re heading outside in droves. I’ve persona...
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What does Data Theatre Look Like? — Lessons from Our First Workshops Since the conclusion of the research phase and our last blog post, our team has been iterating on a series of activities revolving around our continued central goal: How can we create theatre-based experiences that bring people together around data in social contexts, in order to build ...
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Panel talk on Data Against Feminism Project 4/9/2021 I’ll speaking on April 9th with on the Angeles Martinez Cuba (of MIT’s Data + Feminism Lab) on the “Good Data / Data for [Public] Good” Panel at the NULab’s Annual Spring Conference. We’ll be discussing some of the under-construction technology co-design work we are doing with global ad...
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How and Why We Sketch When Visualizing Data If you’re like us, at some point in your early education you decided you couldn’t draw. Your doodles, like ours, didn’t look like you wanted them to. For many, this disappointment can persist into adult life. As researchers into how people learn data visualization, we’re here to tell yo...
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Talk - Get off the screen!!! 4/1/2021 I’ll speaking on April 1st as part of the ART/DATA/HEALTH Seminar series, which focuses on communicating public health data creatively during the pandemic (hosted by the University of Brighton). Register now.
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From Listening Device to Helpful Partner Have a Google Home? Try asking it “can I trust you?”. The response isn’t particularly comforting - a corporate statement about how it’s designed to keep your information secure and a link shared to your phone so you can review the data it has. I followed that link, and found my two most...
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Musical Mosaics: a computational design prototype Computational generative design is a fascinating space available to those with access to coding skills and prototyping machines such as laser cutters and 3d printers. But what happens at the intersections of simple computational design and traditional craft disciplines? We were interest...
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Talk - The Physical Life of Data I’m excited to be speaking with my collaborator Laura Perovich about our Embodying Information project at the Northeastern University Center for Design’s panel on “The Physical Life of Data”. This panel talk is on Thursday Jan 28,2021 at 12pm (Boston time).
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Swiped: How dating apps harm marginalized communities We started out investigating media coverage of LGBTQ+-specific data breach issues, yet race and racism are unavoidable. Potential harms from online dating apps are constant, but our attention to these issues should extend far beyond the pandemic.
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Rethinking Listening Devices A recurring truth of the future of technology is that it sneaks up on us unawares. Technology is adopted before we’ve all had time to consider its consequences, the potential harms that might come. This is certainly true of the rapid spread and normalization of digital voice assistants ...
