Dear Data

Eva (her blogs - Mail Adventures, Oz Postcard Project, and Laughing Cow Project - are in the links on the right) came across an amazing project called Dear Data.

Each week, two women, an Italian in New York, and an American in London, collect, analyze then visualize a data set on a given topic. The visualization is drawn on a postcard and mailed across the pond.

For one week I collected data on my mail art habits - viewing, blogging, creating, sending, receiving, commenting. I don't know how these women are doing it every week for a year, as it was an exhausting week trying to log it all, and then it took me two weeks to turn it into a visual representation.

The link to Dear Data is also in the right column, near the bottom.

Here's my effort, that I sent to Eva. The dark grey circles and circle fragments represent time, and the lines are activities, with the colors representing different people or groups of people.

Eva responded with this appropriate card - she was amazed that I did this. Me, too, as it was really challenging, and I was relieved when it was over.