Our Data, Ourselves

Have you ever seen a cat hiding under a bed with its tail sticking out, revealing its location? Or a child hiding behind a pole, unaware that its body is showing? Without our knowledge, we often give ourselves away. What is the stuff that we’re often unaware of that reveals our emotions, our identities, and our invisible activities? In this program we’ll start by aggregating data about ourselves. From there, we’ll use sensors to collect “biometric data” to look at how physical cues give us away. When do we sweat the most? And is there a difference between the sweat we produce from exertion or anxiety? Could we use this to detect lies? What about heart rate? How could we create a heart monitor to investigate our emotions? We will collect biometric data using DIY and on-the-cheap methods and tools. We’ll engage with ideas around physiology, anatomy, electronic sensing, and how we use proxies to see what’s happening inside of us.

Check out our Our Data, Ourselves projects here:

Final Projects

Use the arrow keys or click the pointers in the lower right
to see the slideshows and other materials we used during this program.

Session 1

Scary, Gross,
Cute, and Beautiful

This program is about you and your ideas.

Over the next three weeks, we'll…

  1. Mess around with activities and ideas
  2. Brainstorm and plan a project
  3. Actually make that project

What data can we collect about you?

How can that data give you away?

What stories can that data tell?

Correlation…

🤔…how do we make
sense of things?

  1. Stuff happens in the world
  2. We measure the stuff
  3. We represent those measurements
  4. We interpret those representations

How good is the iPhone?

What makes something scary?

  1. Open the "scary" envelope of images
  2. Arrange from most to least "scary."
  3. Discuss what makes something "scary." Write down your answers.
  4. How could you measure something connected to those characteristics? Write down your answers.

What makes something cute?

  1. Open the "cute" envelope of images
  2. Arrange from most to least "cute."
  3. Discuss what makes something "cute." Write down your answers.
  4. How could you measure something connected to those characteristics? Write down your answers.

What makes something gross?

  1. Open the "gross" envelope of images
  2. Arrange from most to least "gross."
  3. Discuss what makes something "gross." Write down your answers.
  4. How could you measure something connected to those characteristics? Write down your answers.
  1. Open the "beautiful" envelope
  2. Arrange from most to least "beautiful."
  3. Discuss what makes something "beautiful." Write down your answers.
  4. How could you measure something connected to those characteristics? Write down your answers.

Did we agree?

Tomorrow: How can we measure?

Session 2

Data & Art

Measuring
…scariness,
…beauty,
…cuteness,
…grossness

Making art
(with data)

A few sensors we have…

As a group:
1) find something cool with your sensor;
2) brainstorm [art] projects you could do;
3) sketch one of those projects.

Session 3

Data & Identity

fingerprints

retinal scanning

face recognition
& selfie payments

gait analysis

search history & pregnancy

Write down a cool thing to do with your sensor, or question they should try to ask

  1. …e.g. "What's the hottest thing in the room?"
  2. …"Try running up and down the stairs five times and measure your blood pressure."

Now, rotate sensors!

bit.ly/healey-data

🤔 brainstorm;
🖌 sketch

Session 4

Data & Representation

  1. Say one thing you do daily.
  2. But say what everyone else said, first.

As a group, choose 5 things you do every day and 5 things you like doing. Write each one down on an index card.

  • Animation
  • Color
  • Sound
  • Infographics
  • Graphs
  • Motion
  • Illustration
  • Interactive

bit.ly/healey1201

As a group, write one way to measure the thing on the back of each index card.

bit.ly/healey-data

Session 5

Data & Questions

A few examples of ways you can ask a question

where babies look tells us what they are paying attention to

the sweaty t-shirt study

thermal camera
love test

the difference between
men and women's faces

the difference between
men and women's faces
in disney & pixar movies

What's something that makes people react in a funny or interesting way?

Like falling in love or shocking themselves in an outlet or farting unexpectedly…

Now, take two [thermal/normal] images which ask or answer a question.

Session 6

Brainstorming projects, groups

What is a mock-up?

Make a mock-up for your project,
or browse the projects and mock up the coolest one.
  1. What project do you want to do? (e.g. What question are you trying to answer? What artwork do you want to create? What problem are you trying to solve?)
  2. What data will you need to collect?
  3. How will you collect that data?
  4. What will you show people at the end?
  5. What materials will you need that we don’t already have?

Session 7

Scratch, Arduino, and your projects

Scratch

Arduino

Scratch + Arduino

Please be sure to write down in your letter:

  1. …what you worked on today
  2. …what you want to work on tomorrow
  3. …what you need from us

Session 8

Studio session

bit.ly/ourdata-projects

Session 9

Studio session

Session 10

Studio session

Session 11

Studio session

Session 12

Studio session

Session 13

Studio session

Session 14

Final studio session

Session 15

Documenting!

Last Day 😢

Write about the
past three weeks—

(Anything: things that happened, things you liked, stuff that worked, what you wish we'd done differently, what you expected…)

If you have slides, please email them to alec@thesprouts.org

5 minute survey

Projects