A symposium on the experience of information and materiality of data

Indexical Design



Catherine D’Ignazio

Catherine D’Ignazio is an Assistant Professor of Civic Media and Data Visualization in the Journalism Department at Emerson College, a Fellow at the Engagement Lab and a Research Affiliate at the MIT Center for Civic Media. Her work focuses on data literacy and media innovation. D'Ignazio has co-developed a suite of tools for data literacy (DataBasic.io), developed custom software to geolocate news articles and designed an application, "Terra Incognita", to promote global news discovery. Her art and design projects have won awards from the Tanne Foundation, Turbulence.org, the LEF Foundation, and Dream It, Code It, Win It. Her work has been exhibited at the Eyebeam Center for Art & Technology, Museo d’Antiochia of Medellin, and the Venice Biennial.



Florian Dombois

Florian Dombois (*1966 in Berlin) is an artist, who has focused on models and time, on landforms, labilities, and tectonic activity. In order to extend his artistic development, Dombois studied Geophysics and Philosophy in Berlin, Kiel and Hawaii. In his dissertation “What is an Earthquake?”, he developed, what he calls "Auditory Seismology", an artistic approach to the audification of seismic data. 2003-2011 he was a professor at the Bern University of the Arts (CH); and since 2011 he has been professor at Zurich University of the Arts (CH). He has been exhibited widely in national and international solo- and group-shows. 2010 he received the German Sound Art Prize. Monograph: Kunsthalle Bern (Ed.): "Florian Dombois: What Are the Places of Danger. Works 1999-2009" Berlin: argobooks, 2010. Next show: "Inside Out", solo show at Kunsthalle Marcel Duchamp / The Forestay Museum of Art, Cully (Switzerland), 3.7.-28.8.2016. http://floriandombois.net.



Inge Hinterwaldner

Inge Hinterwaldner is currently a visiting research fellow at MIT School of Architecture + Planning with a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation. There, is writing a book on Fluid Form Conceptions in the kinetic art since the 1960s. In 2009 she received her Ph.D in art history from the University of Basel with an award-winning thesis on interactive computer simulations (The Systemic Image, German: Fink 2010, English: MIT Press 2016). The core argument here circles around a comparison between the linear perspective and the systems perspective. Her research focuses on interactivity and temporality in the arts, computer-based art and architecture, model theory, and the interdependence between the arts and the sciences since the 19th century. She co-edited several volumes, including those addressing medical and scientific visualizations as composites (2006), the relation between image production and modelling practices (2011, 2016), and disposable images (2016).



Ivan Rupnik

Ivan Rupnik is an architect and scholar based in Cambridge, MA and Zagreb, Croatia. He is currently Associate Professor at Northeastern University School of Architecture, where he teaches research based design studios and design theory courses and coordinates the fundamental design studio sequence. He holds a B.Arch. from Louisiana State University, and an M.Arch II and PhD from Harvard University. He has taught at Harvard University, Syracuse University and the Rhode Island School of Design. His interdisciplinary design work leverages intra-scalar systems to generate architectonic works, and has recently included a strategic spatial plan for the University of Zagreb, a new multisensory urban environment for the city of Zagreb, a territorial strategy for fabricating housing in Greater Boston as well as a hybrid typology that combines tourism and health care for the Island of Hvar. His design work informs his scholarship, including his doctoral work at Harvard University on the translation of industrial engineering and management tools into architectural design practice during the interwar period, and “Projecting in Space-Time,” his studies of the evolution of architectural design practice in a context of permanent crisis, published in Project Zagreb: Transition as Condition, Strategy, Practice (Actar, 2007), coauthored with Eve Blau, as well as his single-authored book A Peripheral Moment: Experiments in Architectural Agency (Actar-Birkhauser, 2010) and the essay “Conditionalism: Bevk Perovic Architects,” published in El Croquis 160 (2012). His current research projects include work on the computational design theories of Vjenceslav Richter, the adaptation of modern urban design practice during a century of oil exploitation in Baku, Azerbaijan, and new modes architectural design practice informed by offsite fabrication emerging in North America. Rupnik is Associate Editor of Reviews for the Journal of Architectural Education.



Jens Hauser

Jens Hauser is a Copenhagen and Paris based media studies scholar and art curator focusing on the interactions between art and technology. He holds a dual research position at both the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies and at the Medical Museion at the University of Copenhagen, and is a distinguished affiliated faculty member of the Department of Art, Art History and Design at Michigan State University. His curated exhibitions include L’Art Biotech (Nantes, 2003), Still, Living (Perth, 2007), sk-interfaces (Liverpool, 2008/Luxembourg, 2009), the Article Biennale (Stavanger, 2008), Transbiotics (Riga 2010), Fingerprints... (Berlin, 2011/Munich/2012) Synth-ethic (Vienna, 2011), assemble | standard | minimal (Berlin, 2015), SO3 (Belfort, 2015) and Wetware (Los Angeles, 2016). Hauser is also a founding collaborator of the European culture channel ARTE and has produced numerous reportages and radio features.



Jessica Snyder

Jessica Snyder is a Postdoctoral Fellow with MIT’s Senseable City Lab. Her background is 3D printing biology to fabricate human tissues to treat injury and disease. Jessica received her PhD from Drexel University’s Mechanical Engineering Department under the supervision of Wei Sun in his Biofabrication Lab. She has collaborated with NASA Johnson Space Center's Biophysics Radiation Lab, the National Space Biomedical Research Institute and NASA Ames Research Center.



Kristian Kloeckl

Kristian Kloeckl is Associate Professor at Northeastern University in the Department of Art + Design and the School of Architecture. Prior to coming to Northeastern, Kristian was a faculty member at the University IUAV of Venice and a research scientist leading the Real Time City Group at MIT’s Senseable City Lab as part of which he established the lab’s research unit in Singapore. There, he and his team pioneered a data platform and data visualization research initiative that brought together real time data from Singapore’s key public and private urban systems operators. As a design practitioner Kristian has worked with companies in Germany, Austria and Italy. Kristian's work focuses on interaction design in today's context of cities as they are becoming physical-digital hybrids in which information is, in significant ways, material, and matter is informational. He is interested in the growing complexity of the relationship between these dimensions as a consequence of people's interaction with pervasive digital technologies in everyday environments and activities. Kristian has published books and in international journals on these issues and his work has been exhibited at venues such as MoMA, Vienna MAK, Venice Architecture Biennale, Singapore Art Museum, China Millennium Monument Museum of Digital Arts.



Lourdes Vera

Lourdes Vera is a member of the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute (SSEHRI) and a PhD student in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. She received her BA in Urban Studies from Barnard College at Columbia University and MA in Teaching Earth Science from CUNY Brooklyn College. As a former teacher, she is interested in how D.I.Y. tools and data visualization can facilitate deeper understandings of scientific phenomena for individuals from all skill levels and backgrounds. She is especially interested in using citizen science to address environmental health and justice concerns with communities affected by oil and gas development. Currently, she is a research assistant to Prof. Sara Wylie developing a photopaper tool measuring low, chronic amounts of the toxic gas hydrogen sulfide that is emitted from oil and gas sites, presenting health risks to adjacent communities.



Moritz Stefaner

Moritz Stefaner works as a “truth and beauty operator” on the crossroads of data visualization, information aesthetics and user interface design. With a background in Cognitive Science (B.Sc. with distinction, University of Osnabrueck) and Interface Design (M.A., University of Applied Sciences Potsdam), his award-winning work beautifully balances analytical and aesthetic aspects in mapping abstract and complex phenomena. His work has been exhibited at Venice Biennale of Architecture, SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica and the Max Planck Science Gallery. Find his personal portfolio at http://truth-and-beauty.net. He also publishes the Data Stories podcast (http://datastori.es) together with Enrico Bertini.



Orkan Telhan

Orkan Telhan is Assistant Professor of Fine Arts - Emerging Design Practices at University of Pennsylvania, School of Design. He holds a PhD in Design and Computation from MIT's Department of Architecture. He was part of the Sociable Media Group at the MIT Media Laboratory and the Mobile Experience Lab at the MIT Design Laboratory. Telhan's individual and collaborative work has been exhibited internationally in venues including the 13th Istanbul Biennial, 1st Istanbul Design Biennial, the Armory Show 2015 Special Projects, Ars Electronica, ISEA, LABoral, Archilab, Architectural Association, the Architectural League of New York, MIT Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York.



Paul Dourish

Paul Dourish is a Professor of Informatics in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at UC Irvine, with courtesy appointments in Computer Science and Anthropology, and an Honorary Senior Fellow in Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses primarily on understanding information technology as a site of social and cultural production; his work combines topics in human-computer interaction, social informatics, and science and technology studies. He is the author of "Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction" (MIT Press, 2001), which explores how phenomenological accounts of action can provide an alternative to traditional cognitive analysis for understanding the embodied experience of interactive and computational systems, and, with Genevieve Bell, "Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing" (MIT Press, 2011), which examines the social and cultural aspects of the ubiquitous computing research program. He is a Fellow of the ACM, a member of the SIGCHI Academy, and a recipient of the AMIA Diana Forsythe Award and the CSCW Lasting Impact Award. Before coming to UCI, he was a Senior Member of Research Staff in the Computer Science Laboratory of Xerox PARC; he has also held research positions at Apple Computer and at Rank Xerox EuroPARC. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from University College, London, and a B.Sc. (Hons) in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh.



Pedro Cruz

Pedro Cruz is Assistant Professor at Northeastern University (CAMD — Art + Design). He is a data visualization designer and explorer. In 2014 he was awarded on the category for Design and Social Movements at the 4th Ibero-American Biennial of Design. He won the ACM SIGGRAPH Student Research Competition in 2010 and was a semi-finalist in 2011. His work was featured in several exhibitions around the world such as CES, MoMA’s Talk to Me and SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival as well as in magazines such as Fast Company (Co.Design and Co.Create) and Wired (US and UK) and in specialized books. Pedro enjoys sharing his vision on information visualization, and has done so through several lectures and presentations in the United States, Brazil, France, Spain and Portugal.



Sara Wylie

Sara Wylie is an Assistant Professor in Northeastern University’s Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute. Her work develops new forms of collaborative academic and community based research to study industrially produced environmental health hazards. Wylie is jointly appointed in Sociology/Anthropology and Health Sciences. She is also a JBP Environmental Health Fellow with Harvard School of Public Health (http://ehfellows.sph.harvard.edu/). She received her Ph.D. from MIT’s History, Anthropology, Science, Technology and Society (HASTS) Program. Her forthcoming book with Duke University Press entitled: "Shale Gas: Corporate Bodies and Chemicals Bonds" examines the environmental health hazards of unconventional energy. Sara is also a cofounder of [Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science http://publiclab.org/], a non-profit that develops open source, Do It Yourself tools for community based environmental analysis.



Simon A. Cole

Simon A. Cole is Professor of Criminology, Law and Society and Director of the Newkirk Center for Science & Society at the University of California, Irvine. He received his Ph.D. in Science & Technology Studies from Cornell University. Dr. Cole is the author of Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification (Harvard University Press, 2001), which was awarded the 2003 Rachel Carson Prize by the Society for Social Studies of Science, and Truth Machine: The Contentious History of DNA Fingerprinting (University of Chicago Press, 2008, with Michael Lynch, Ruth McNally & Kathleen Jordan). He is a member of the Human Factors Subcommittee of the National Commission on Forensic Science and the Forensic Culture Task Force for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and a Co-Investigator in the NIST Center for Excellence, the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence. He is Co-Editor of the journal Theoretical Criminology.



Skye Moret

Skye Moret is a marine scientist and designer, who believes in the power of visualization and meaningful engagement in bridging the gap between two traditionally polar disciplines: design and science. Her work investigates the complex relationship between humans, technology and nature. Skye creates work that encourages curiosity, empathy, and interaction, and explores these themes through data-driven design and visual storytelling. Skye believes that the synergy of seemingly disparate disciplines will create the social-environmental engagement necessary for dynamic stewardship of our planet.



Susanne Jaschko

Dr Susanne Jaschko is a Berlin based independent curator, author and lecturer. Her work centers on an experimental art practice expanding the understanding of art and its social and cultural effects. Digital culture is often a conceptual point of departure for her projects, since it deeply changed the understanding of authorship, the public, process, time and space. Former positions included Head of Presentations and of the Artist in Residence program at the Netherlands Media Art Institute in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and curator and deputy director of transmediale – festival of art and digital culture in Berlin, Germany. Under the label of 'prozessagenten,' she develops realises participatory and processual projects in collaboration with artists and designers – such as Data Cuisine. Next to her curatorial work she has taught on an academic level in Germany and abroad. Currently, she teaches at the Berlin University of the Arts and curates Colomboscope 2016, which will focus on art and digital cultures in Europe and South Asia. http://sujaschko.de http://prozessagenten.org



Tom Schofield

Tom Schofield is an artist, designer, educator and researcher based at Culture Lab, Newcastle University, UK. His practice-based research spreads across creative computational and electronic media, archives and collections interface design / visualisation and physical computing. His PhD thesis explored the role of technological materiality in developing works of art and design as part of ecologies of experience. Recent creative projects include Me_asure (with John Bowers) an interactive installation which combines the 19th C pseudo-science of physiognomy with contemporary face tracking technology, Neurotic Armageddon Indicator, a wall clock for the end of the world and null by morse, an installation with vintage military equipment and iPhones.



Dietmar Offenhuber

Dietmar Offenhuber is Assistant Professor at Northeastern University in the departments of Art + Design and Public Policy, where he heads the Information Design and Visualization graduate program. He holds a PhD in Urban Planning from MIT, a MS in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab, and a Dipl. Ing. in Architecture from the Technical University Vienna. His research field could be described as Accountability Design – focusing on the relationship between visual representations and urban governance. Dietmar led a number of research projects investigating formal and informal waste systems and has published books on the subjects of Urban Data, Accountability Technologies and Urban Informatics. His PhD dissertation received the Outstanding Dissertation Award 2014 from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, his research received the Best Paper Award 2012 from the Journal of the American Planning Association.