Advent - dear data

Eva got me hooked on the Dear Data project, where two women, Giorga in New York and Stephanie in London collected data about their lives each week, created a visual representation of it, then sent it on a postcard to each other. The project is almost over, with only a few weeks of postcards left to go on the blog. This will be turned into a book, too.

I tracked my own mail art data for a week, and sent the results to Eva. It was so hard, I can't imagine being able to keep it up week after week for a whole year, and if you read the website there were some weeks where it was not so enjoyable. You can also listen to an interview about this project here.

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.