The Boston View — Dancing Data
In December 1975 the International Statistical Review published a short article by Brian L. Joiner, professor of statistics at The University of Wisconsin. The short article is composed of four pictures depicting human subjects — students volunteers — distributed in a field by weight or height to form ‘living’ histograms (see attached picture). The pictures in the article are meant to explain statistical concepts to students who are “not numerically nor algebraically oriented”. Joiner recognizes that “Most students and indeed society as a whole tend to think of statistics as a dull subject having to do with endless columns of numbers, and having little to do with people or other interesting things”. Joiner’s solution is to create teaching aids that “help to demonstrate to students that statistics is a “live” interesting subject which finds application throughout the real world”.
Forty-Five years after Joiner, literacy on data and statistics, numbers and algebra, is still an issue and the need to engage users that might not be interested in data is even stronger. So why don’t we push Joiner’s approach further and make data really alive, moving it through time and space, beyond the two dimensions of a flat picture? Around this idea, a dialogue between the Center for Design and the Department of Theater has started recently in the College of Arts Media and Design (CAMD) at Northeastern University. It all started with a public event where the work of Federica Fragapane on theater and data visualization triggered a conversation between faculties, scholars and students from different disciplines.
In her performance, Federica mailny explores one direction in the bilateral relationship between data and theater: she combines theater and information design by bringing data visualizations on stage, in the background, as a dynamic representation of the interactions between the characters, using basically the script as a dataset (data for theater). At Northeastern we’d like to explore also the other direction: how theater — and performing arts more in general — can help representing data in a way that creates a deeper bond with the audience, connecting also with the phenomenon behind the data (theater for data).
Two faculties at CAMD — Rahul Bhargava and Laura Perovic, recently-hired from MIT — have conducted experiments to explore how we as human beings naturally use context, our body and movement to understand the world around and how this can be applied to enhance data literacy: Taking data “off-the screen” and putting them in action within a community proved to be a potential source of deeper engagement and ultimately understanding for the citizens. With all the data available about the complex phenomena we are all immersed in — but we struggle to understand, as the current pandemic — the use of theater and dance to perform data and create empathy within a community is something local governments and civic organizations should definitely be interested in.
