...while researching on visualizations for the bird-man thingy...

What I learnt from "Beyond data" ws book brainstorming yesterday:

- Projects can be recycled too (not only domestic/industrial remains)

- brainstorming is nice on ping-pong tables - this was a great adventure :) - ping-pong tables proved to be a ready-to-use meaningful space to make order into ideas - the little child was just making efforts to rise while we worked on rising clear ideas from blurred ones

- Be physical! (It is important and exciting to work with data in general - but if the output is a tangible object it is even more exciting because our primer medium of sensation is the physical world around us) ... data physicalisations

- Intimate, personal - with the concept “take your breath away”
- we all liked the concept without having a complete image of the concept
- although the concept seemed to be pretty simple it also proved to be hard to elaborate when we went into details

- think in systems - yes, that`s true...

- Recreate real social interactions - with granny colours knitting (data granny) probably this was the project i liked the best (at least the thing what i understood of the concept)
- social interaction
- real conversation,
- fair job for grannies
- using the output as art or for some design purposes (and not throwing away the remains of an installation creating more waste)
- the data source for this project was not meaningful enough
- similar adventure (the social interacion part) from recent exhibitions (budapest): - Eat love – Marije Vogelzang

Just started to work on the book of Beyond data workshop.

Thinking about what is beyond data became one of the most important issues for me these days. More specifically it is brainstorm about embodying datasets.

I think it is important and exciting to work with data in general, and when we have a printed or interactive visualization with sophisticated graphics it is still interesting. But if the output is a tangible object it is even more exciting because our primer medium of sensation is the physical world around us. That`s why "beyond data" sounds so inviting.

And another thing: because visualizing data in physical space requires much more efforts than manipulating screen graphic, animation or printed graphic, focusing on tangible objects as output makes the group focus more on the idea itself. This makes the brainstorming more effective to select the strongest ideas and forget about weak ones.

Yesterday Ed Borden was in Kibu and gave an inspiring lecture on what they are working on these days in Pachube. I previously followed the history of Pachube from the point when it was founded so there was not so many surprising things mentioned for me.

A couple of special cases about how people use pachube was really interesting though.

One example is related to the Fukushima disaster. People started to stream their own measures of radiation via Pachube after it turned out that the information the governments provided was not trustful.

Marian Steinbach also made a visualization about the continuous change of radiations measured in Gremany.