Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Data Vandals: Taking Data Visualization Off the Screen and Into the Streets
2 Playsin 9 hours
In this episode, I sat down with Jen Ray and Jason Forrest—the married duo behind Data Vandals—to talk about their remarkable approach to bringing data visualization off the screen and into the physical world. What started as a pandemic-era poster campaign in New York City evolved into street theater, interactive gallery installations, and a Piaggio Ape three-wheeler touring London with opinion surveys. We talked about how they use isotypes, stickers, and hand-painted signs to spark real conversations between strangers about everything from gun violence to foxes to billionaires. We also got into their recent workshops in the Netherlands and Budapest, and their stunning new installation at Los Angeles Union Station about the city’s native wildlife. If you’ve ever wondered whether people will actually stop and engage with data—even on a cold March day in the East Village—this episode will convince you they will.
Keywords: data visualization, data vandals, Jen Ray, Jason Forrest, physical data visualization, data art, community engagement, isotype, street data, data physicalization, data communication, PolicyViz podcast, data storytelling, interactive data, data literacy, public data, data journalism, data design
Subscribe to the PolicyViz Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
Follow Data Vandals on Instagram @datavandals and visit their website at datavandals.com
Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, Substack, Twitter, Website, YouTube
Email: jon@policyviz.com
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Policy Viz Podcast and Guests
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome back to the Policy Viz Podcast. I'm your host, John Schwabisch. We keep rolling here on the show. And on this week's episode of the show, I'm very excited because I get to talk to not to just to one person, but to two people, not just to any two people, two people who are married and not just to two any married people, but two married people who are doing very cool things at the intersection of data, data visualization and design.
00:00:36
Speaker
I am joined this week by Jason Forrest and Jen Ray, the minds behind the Data Vandals Project, which is bringing interactive physical data visualizations and data products to folks all around the world. We talk about the history of the project,
00:00:52
Speaker
where it came from, the sorts of projects they started with, the sorts of projects they're doing now, and how they are facilitating conversations and discussion around data and around data visualization. i think you're really gonna enjoy this conversation. I really had a good time, as you're going to hear, so I hope you'll check out the entire
Meet Jen Ray and Jason Forrest
00:01:11
Speaker
episode. And of course, when you're done, or review the show wherever you get this podcast, be it Spotify, iTunes,
00:01:18
Speaker
on my website on youtube on zencast or wherever you get it would appreciate that little thumbs up that little heart so okay that's enough let's get over to the interview here's my conversation with jason and jen of data vandals only on the policy viz podcast
00:01:35
Speaker
hi jen hi jason how's it going Great. Great. Thanks for coming on the show. You've been traveling, so i'm glad we could find some time. I'm excited to chat about all the stuff that you've been doing. Why don't we start with intros? Because my guess is lot of people know data vandals, but maybe not the people behind who are the actual vandalizers. So why don't we start with intros?
00:02:01
Speaker
We can we could talk more about the project. Jen, you want to first?
Origin of the Data Vandals Project
00:02:05
Speaker
I'll start. Okay. So I'm Jen Ray and I'm a visual artist in my other part of my life and a teacher as well, but um I have my own like contemporary art practice.
00:02:17
Speaker
Jason and I did go to art school together way back in the day. So now through the data vandals, we're kind of finding ways to combine our separate talents into one project, which started during the pandemic. So I'm sure we'll get to talk about that a little bit. But yeah, so i'm a visual artist and and that's what I do.
00:02:36
Speaker
so i'm Jason Forrest I'm Jen's husband. That's right. We're a married couple doing work together. um Yeah, I'm a data expert. I ah data is expert. I worked ah at McKinsey where I led their COVID work and eventually created a whole service line called the Data Visualization Lab.
00:02:58
Speaker
and was a creative director for the McKinsey Health Institute. So I had all this McKinsey kind of very corporate work. I was the ah the co-founder and editor of Nightingale, the magazine for the Data Visualization Society.
00:03:11
Speaker
And i i kind of got involved in data visualization through all this research on database history. it Started with being part of the kind of loose-knit group of people ah focused on W.E.B. Du Bois.
00:03:25
Speaker
And then got involved in isotype. And so with isotype and this kind of pictorial statistics, we started to try to figure out, we wanted to get more involved with with how do you get data onto the street.
First Data Vandals Project: Street Theater
00:03:39
Speaker
And so as I was doing this corporate work, I was like, how do we do something that's more experimental, something that's much more engaging? And to a degree, even as an outcropping of what we were doing with Nightingale, which was a more illustrative, a more empathetic kind of version of of data visualization. And so that's kind of how data vandals got started. um But back, I think we started in 2021.
00:04:04
Speaker
twenty twenty one ehi So, ah sorry, we've merged from my intro to the intro into the data. yeah I kind of wanted to, that it kind of made sense. Okay, so bring me back to 2021. You were working at McKinsey. You were doing the isotype stuff, I remember. Jen, you are teaching and doing your art.
00:04:23
Speaker
And then what was the conversation like? What was the what was the decision point to say, we're going to go out in the street and build a thing that people can interact with?
Cooper Union Exhibition and Community Interaction
00:04:34
Speaker
So I think what happened, we we discussed this in multiple different ways. So a lot of threads kind of came together at the same time. But I remember, so my art practice, I was working in my studio, but it was put on a hold a little bit because we were not having exhibitions and yeah everybody during the pandemic, right? Everybody was working in their own separate spaces.
00:04:54
Speaker
But after a while, i feel like we became really frustrated, especially as New Yorkers, with the lack of communication between people. It was only online that people were talking. And we were like, okay, well, we're living in this community and we have some things to say. and how are we going to speak to people? Because at that point, I think...
00:05:15
Speaker
People, it almost felt very lonely. People were just so in their little separate boxes. At some point we we knew that we could all come out into the streets together. And we also, I think Jason and I were waiting on the city of New York to make some kind of proclamation about yeah how New Yorkers were dealing with the pandemic.
00:05:33
Speaker
And they never did. There was never any kind of positive messaging or let's get together and and we can do it in New York. um We kind of were like it was just crickets. Right. and yeah And actually it was kind of a negative kind of sensibility about like New York's.
00:05:49
Speaker
doing bad. And we were like, new New Yorkers are really helping each other and banding together. And so we wanted to create kind of like a campaign. And so I created like this poster that was a poster campaign for like New York positivity and like bravery.
00:06:06
Speaker
Jason created a series of posters using data and isotypes about actually the unhoused in New York City and trying to get people to think about New York statistics in a way that was not all negative, like how you can kind of think of helping people or you can see the data in a different way. So we had this separate weird poster campaign yeah during the pandemic.
00:06:29
Speaker
And then we were like, what are we doing? like And we were literally saying like, oh, well, you can buy your posters here for this cost and that, you know. And so it was just kind of bizarre that we had this dual track kind of social act. And I think it is very much very pandemic related because everybody started doing kind of weird things.
00:06:45
Speaker
that they wouldn't have done previously, especially from a creative sense. So anyway, we finally we were like, why don't we combine this together? And we were asked to we were asked to participate in this fantastic exhibition um called Data Through Design. And we were like, why don't we use data and use performance and we can use isotypes and we can use visuals and we can get together and create this project.
Central Park Installation on Gun Violence
00:07:12
Speaker
And that's where the data vandals kind of that's where That's where it started. And so what happened was in all this research on isotype that I was doing, I saw there was this tiny little footnote that said at some point Otto and Marie were in the Netherlands. they did Otto and Marie Noirath did a ah an isotype puppet show.
00:07:31
Speaker
And that just kind of blew my mind. I was like, what the hell is an isotype puppet? puppet show. like yeah And so we were like, well, let's do it as like street theater. And so our first data vandals thing is this kind of street performance where we basically took, we had 10 people line up in a line and then we had done a survey. And so we kind of broke the answers into each icon, each person held up an icon that represented 10% of the data.
00:07:59
Speaker
And they were kind of funny signs. And then the performance itself was on an unbelievably cold day, like just brutal cold. And it was like wind And was March. I have to say, it was March data through design to give them a plug.
00:08:13
Speaker
We're getting ready for data a week. And they were part of that. And every year the show just gets better and better. But it was in March in the East village. It was an especially cold March. Man, I was still scarred from it And so what happened was we we had these little kids hand out the icons to the people that were holding. They're actually holding these big isotype kind of characters, these figures.
00:08:35
Speaker
And then this really kind of important thing happened where it took time for these kids just to kind of figure out how to hand them out. You know, they're kind of messy. And Jen just started kind of riffing with the audience and started asking them, Well, what do you think the most dangerous animal in New York City is?
00:08:53
Speaker
Right. and So, what do what do John, what do you think? What's the most dangerous animal? Dangerous animal. I mean, probably just ah a Mets fan would be my first guess. Oh, ouch.
00:09:04
Speaker
The most dangerous animal in New York City? um I guess the rat. No. So according, and again, this all goes back to this open data portal, we should have said, open data that is created by the city. So according to 311 nuisance calls, the raccoon is the most and that makes more slow scary, dangerous yeah dangerous animal. And we we do have these like very overfed raccoons here.
00:09:30
Speaker
They're massive and they're kind of hang out in Central Park sometimes. And they're just like really bulky. So anyway, we just started, the point is we started having a direct interaction with an audience. And so this kind of was the kernel of the philosophy of it. It's like not just charts, not just the digital, but get out from your computer, give people the data, but also like give time, give people time to like interact, to think about it, contribute their own story to, to the data at hand. And so that's kind of,
Mobile Data Collection in London
00:10:01
Speaker
That's what happened. The beginnings. Yeah. so Our origin story. yeah Right. so for So for that one, when you say interact, it was primarily interacting with you two.
00:10:12
Speaker
And I'm curious, since then, have you tried to facilitate interaction that is between the participants in addition to interacting with you? Yes. You want to talk about, are you talking about London first or? Well, I was going to get there. So what's funny is that we consider the project to be an experiment. Like we do retrospectives as ah as ah as an artist group. Why are you still being negative? You love retrospectives.
00:10:40
Speaker
I do not. You love um As an artist. Why would you say that? Because as an artist, I'm like, you do the work, you put it out there, if people like it or not, whatever. But I do think the retrospective for this project, of course, I think what you're alluding to is that we do grow with each project and we start finding ways for people to have a closer relationship to the data and to influence or contribute to the data? We now pretty much start each project with with an inbound hypothesis, and we have certain things that we're trying to test.
00:11:12
Speaker
And so we we had about maybe two and a half years where it was, we really kind of feeling through Exactly to the point of your question, like, what is the dialogue? yeah like Are people just talking amongst themselves? Are they in conversation with us?
00:11:28
Speaker
And so we had an exhibition here at Cooper Union, the art school, and it was effectively a museum all about the East Village. So the ten and a half blocks of the East Village. It was called Free as Air and Water. Yeah, which is good the name of one of the things that ah ah
Workshops in the Netherlands and Hungary
00:11:46
Speaker
Peter Cooper had said about tuition and really education. And so what's so fascinating about it is we had lots of different charts, lots of different signs, ah lots of sculptures. But there was just a wall with these sticker votes at the back. And we knew that we wanted to have this interaction.
00:12:04
Speaker
But we that was literally the last thing. And I think Jennifer bashed it out. like 10 minutes before the opening and just stickers on white pieces of paper. Are you a data newbie? Are you experienced blah, blah, blah.
00:12:18
Speaker
And people went insane. Like they, we ended up giving out like 2000 stickers in three days. Yeah. wow um And you could totally start to see these trends.
00:12:30
Speaker
And they became these really places where people would stay and have conversations and husbands and wives would get into conversations about the data because they would kind of expect one person to say something differently. And Well, allowed people to meet each other.
00:12:45
Speaker
and oh yes, absolutely. That's another thing is that when ah as an as an artist, you know I'll have an exhibition, and in the exhibition will be all these people that are kind of similar in some way. And the difference, which was very exciting, was at the Cooper Union Show, there were all types of people And then because of this interaction with these pieces of paper, asking questions, someone standing beside, know, like maybe this is somebody from the neighborhood and she's 80. And I'm a person that's like a student. I go to and NYU, but I'm not from New York. And they're like conversing. And so for the first time we realized like,
00:13:19
Speaker
how special it was that, you know, we talk about the loneliness epidemic all the time. And this creates an exhibition that created like kind of a a safe space to get to know your neighbor in this like really fun way.
00:13:31
Speaker
But with a little friction too, because people are arguing against things. Yeah. Well, a little bit and it was, what was also fascinating. There was a few, I mean, we, I mean, it was a great show. We learned a lot. As you can tell, we've like always like doing a thing and then trying to figure out what's going on.
00:13:45
Speaker
People would stay for a long time. i remember this one woman was running in her running outfit and she stopped in her tracks, came in stayed for an hour and a half. We ended up eventually working with her on a project. She runs a whole design agency in Chicago. Yeah. And so it was really it was really wild um that people would they'd come in and they'd stay.
00:14:08
Speaker
um The other thing that was fascinating is ah there were times when people would come to the opening, they'd leave and they'd come back and they just go just to read everything. But I think one of our main points, and this also comes from this poster campaign idea, is trying to
Current Projects and NYC Subway Installation
00:14:25
Speaker
stop so much passivity.
00:14:27
Speaker
Like, I think that was another thing that really bothered us, that people have become just passive viewers to things. And it's like, that's not enough. Scrolling through real quickly.
00:14:38
Speaker
Exactly. And it's something I even talked to my son about. It's like, don't just be the person that stares into something. Yeah. You know, you're going to to do something. And so that show kind of kicked that idea off. And I think the other thing that was really fascinating about it, which I'll move into something that's very different in just a sec, which is that, um,
00:14:56
Speaker
we noticed that um that that people weren't looking at their phones. When you go to an art opening, usually people kind of breeze through, they look at the artwork, then they talk about movies or something. They just chit chat with each other and they're hanging out with a glass of wine or something like that.
00:15:10
Speaker
In our show, they were looking at the walls and having conversations with other people about what was going on the subject matter of the East Village, of their lives, of housing, things like this. And so that was really fascinating. And so...
00:15:24
Speaker
And then actually the next thing we did after that is there was the school shooting at Evaldi, Texas. And Jen was like, we've got to do something about this. And so she started kind of on her own building out this, what I describe as a wal Washington Monument of Death. It's basically like a nine foot, you know, what do you call it? Yeah.
00:15:46
Speaker
I had a, it's a, it's the, it's a black color. Monolith. No, no. It's the Washington Monument, but it's black. And I built it out of this big cardboard box that I had. And I put a a cap on the top of it. Yeah. Triangle. And it had a bunch of stats on one side. We wheeled it out. And a big isotype about school shootings on the other. And we put it. in Central Park, and then we were like, let's just talk to people.
00:16:11
Speaker
And mostly we talked to people from out of town and they yeah were surprised by the statistics. And I think the other part about that is that you hear the statistics and you know it from an intellectual level, but it's very difficult emotionally to take in. And the point of taking it out into the street and having discussions is that you are so you see the data, know,
00:16:35
Speaker
refreshed anew, which is not good, but you are kind of forced to really interact and talk about it instead of just trying to hope yeah hope it goes away, which is what we do when we see the statistics online. I mean, how I'd characterize it is by taking data out of the digital world and putting it in the physical world,
00:16:55
Speaker
It just gets it just it caught people's attention in a very different way. yeah And we've done some other kind of gun violence oriented awareness projects and have met people that are definitely pro-gun.
00:17:09
Speaker
But it's never, it's it's a good, it's kind of a chill vibe. Like you kind of expect for people to be like, there'd be like more like people arguing. And it's really not that. And they're not online. So you're talking to real human. You're talking to a real person. So one guy came up and he's like, I don't think there should be any gun laws at all. Any restrictions.
00:17:27
Speaker
And of course I was like, ah! So I had to, I'm like, Jason, you take this because I'm going to blow up. but But I saw Jason having a talk with him. That was great. I think I gave him hug. Yeah. So it's like, you know. Do people come to you regularly?
00:17:46
Speaker
thinking that you're like experts in, in gun violence or do they, or do they pretty immediately see that this is just a conversation with people? Yeah, ah could definitely that because a lot of people, when we were talking to them, kind of kind of unloaded their own stories. So it's not that technical. they would They would tell us some incident or they knew someone and we would talk to them and we talked for hours and we were exhausted afterwards. We talked the entire day.
Exhibition at Los Angeles Union Station
00:18:13
Speaker
And I will say one thing that's a little side note. Sometimes people ask us, like, do we get funding or how can we afford to do this? And I'm like, look, I had a Sunday, everyone probably yeah as a Sunday, i had a cardboard box and some inexpensive paints and we put, and of course we have our skills, but we put it together and wheeled it out. We just, we just did it. We just snapped off a day to do this thing that we felt strongly about. And I think anyone can do it. There is really no big technique there.
00:18:43
Speaker
yeah of it And I would do it differently now. I would do it in a different way, but at the time we did it. So it's a really interesting question, John. um And it's really funny because, and thank you for answering first, because it's it it allowed me to process a little bit.
00:18:57
Speaker
It was really that project where we also started to back away from the the authenticity of data or something like that. The authoritative stance of data.
00:19:10
Speaker
Right. Almost scientific. Yeah. And it was really, it was really funny because people would bring their lived experience in And I, I kind of treat it all very much like, i you know, I've got the books and I've, I've read them. I try to put the sources, you know, we we try to like really, you know, if it's a, if it's a chart, it should be labeled correctly, you know?
00:19:31
Speaker
Um, But people may not agree. you know Their lived experience is different. And what ah what's funny is using that ah the the sources and talking through how the data is collected has definitely become a bigger and bigger issue in how we have these conversations. Yeah.
00:19:56
Speaker
Do you think people would approach the same statistics? And I'm not sure whether the presentation is different, but but the same statistics online versus in Central Park, do they just approach that differently? So if you see this bar chart in the New York Times versus seeing a bar chart made out of blocks or cardboard, like, do you think people approach it in just a different way? Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah. 100%.
00:20:22
Speaker
Because we're standing there and we're pretty open too, because the barrier I mean, the New York Times is what it is, right? Like it's iconic platform for that kind of data.
00:20:35
Speaker
And here we are, two goofballs, but now I mean, very educated and like intelligent people, but we are very open. And we're trying to, even when a very so serious subject, we're still trying to bring an element of kind of entertainment into it.
00:20:49
Speaker
Right. Openness and like an experimentation, as you mentioned earlier, I think adds to this like exchange. Yeah, I think the so there's just two two things that I would add. I think the first is that um I think journalism, I think data journalism has unfortunately become a bit of a cudgel where people are like making a point and they're showing you the data. And so you have to know what it is like. Boom, boom, boom. Here's the chart. Here's the chart.
00:21:16
Speaker
And i I don't fault anybody for it. I mean, clearly I'm a fan at the same time. We've really backed away from a lot of that, right? Because the real goal is the conversation. Because I
Engagement and Future Projects in NY and LA
00:21:31
Speaker
think at first we had different expectations for what a Saturday in Central Park talking about gun violence would be.
00:21:38
Speaker
I was like ah mildly frightened of what would happen. Oh, we were. We were. We were nervous. We were very nervous when we went out there and it was a great day. We like met new friends. now I will add one little caveat to that is that we are New Yorkers and we did something in New York City.
00:21:57
Speaker
Right. That is different. But that's that that is different from going somewhere. to talk about London next. much more controversial, but yes, we can talk about, i'll just put that little peg there. No, but I think that's a, that's a really good point, right? Because you're in New York city, you're in central park. So you're, it's already like a certain environment um with a certain, um,
00:22:18
Speaker
I guess, ah tenor of the city, as it were, both politically and socially, that might not hold up in other places. But Jason, your point, I want to hear about other projects and other localities, because I know you've done this all over the world. So I'm curious what you've seen in other places.
00:22:35
Speaker
So... I don't know if it was directly after, but what came, at least in this narrative, is we were asked by our friends at Canva Flourish or Flourish Canva um to do something for London Data Week.
00:22:49
Speaker
ah And it was really funny because we they also helped to support our Cooper Union show. And we've been friends with them for a while now. And they're just super nice folks. ah And we went to London and they said, ah well, we want to do something that's going to be about engaging with the community in London. We want to do it on our space, but our space is busy. We want to do it this park, but actually you can't really do it in the park. And they're like, we to do it on the street, but you can't do it on the street. And so finally we were like, well, let's just make a vehicle and we'll drive it around London and we'll actually go to the people instead of kind of hope that some of them come to flourish. Right. And this actually ties in with what we were talking about because
00:23:27
Speaker
instead of picking a place that's safe, and I'm not not saying we went to unsafe places, but we we wanted a variety of locations to kind field test exactly what you're saying. Yeah. yeah So we rent we ended up renting.
00:23:43
Speaker
It was funny. We wanted to do like a bike, one of those bike things with the ice cream that you ride like at a vehicle. With like an umbrella. And then Jen was like, it's not big enough and we won't have enough space for data.
00:23:56
Speaker
So let's get one of these, those little like three wheeled. It's a Piaggio Ape. It's a 1980s Italian delivery vehicle. This little three wheeled vehicle. Yeah. And we, so we'd wrapped it in graphics and we drove it around the city and we gave basically a survey, the great London survey.
00:24:13
Speaker
um And. I have something to say about that too, though. Well, let me talk about the survey, then you can talk about the background for it. No, go ahead and talk about the background. I do want to say for the first time, so we we had been making everything by hand in a studio in New York. that's true. every single thing was hand painted. It took a very long time. I love doing it, so I wasn't really complaining.
00:24:35
Speaker
But the London thing for the first time, we actually were able to make graphics from our kitchen table. Scan them. So still handmade. Scan them, put them in digital files, and send them away to create a vinyl wrap in another country. And that was a huge unlock just to just to be able to do something like that. So right okay add that in. The handmade stayed, but in a different way.
00:24:59
Speaker
Yeah, because I still think that there's a very friendly aesthetic and vibe, but um it just becomes much more professional looking. It becomes much scalable. Yeah. You know. Anyway, could resume.
00:25:11
Speaker
And so we took this Piaggio drove it around. and The whole idea was to give out a survey. The survey was kind of in reference to the Doomsday book, which is one of the first ah data collections in 1684. But we want to do this survey. And it was kind of like a riffing on the opinion matrix. So was like, I love it. I hate it It's classy. It's trashy, tacky.
00:25:34
Speaker
That's what they said in in the UK. And then we have these stickers and there were eight subjects on it. And then just a printed poster. And we just invited people to put the sticker to show their opinion about these different things.
00:25:48
Speaker
And so based on other the other learnings that we've had from other projects, we had... people and other our British friends test all the subject matter and all the language. So instead of using trashy, which is something they don't really use in London, like we were able to kind of customize the whole thing. And so What's really funny is we thought that we would just go out and do this survey and people would just answer it and just put the sticker on and that would be it. And we'd have some kind of interesting data set that did happen.
00:26:17
Speaker
But we had this like like a little poster stand. It was this crappy little aluminum rickety thing. And when you put a piece of foam core on it and and the the poster on one side, guess what? Wind hits it, it falls over. nice So what happened instead is someone's always standing there holding on to the stupid poster in the poster board.
00:26:39
Speaker
And this really amazing thing happened, which is that a person wouldn't just stick the sticker. They would stick the sticker and tell you why. Oh, interesting. Right. And I believe it's a psychological kind of reflection to kind of create more empathy so that people aren't judging you on what they do.
00:26:59
Speaker
Right. But it became this fascinating exercise where people would start talking about it um and they'd talk to the person that was standing there or they talked to each other. It became this provocation of a conversation based on these certain subjects.
00:27:13
Speaker
Yeah. No, that's exactly right. And I mean, we had, once again, we had a blast doing it and we met so many people and we We also, the way we talk about data collection is also quite different than when you when you hear that. I think a lot of people are very spooked by that notion, right? It's like, yeah oh, you're collecting my data.
00:27:34
Speaker
And we try to also build into this the idea that we're we're not trying to harness your data for nefarious purposes, but we are trying to create kind of more like a community of data of kind of these shared experiences. And we're not,
00:27:49
Speaker
We didn't do it anything with it except enjoy the outcome, essentially. right And then we we told people the outcome. Like we showed um in another project, we showed how people had voted and we discussed it and we discussed the various locations and how people voted. And some of those things were very humorous. For instance, um we had this sticker about billionaires. Like, how do you feel about billionaires on this matrix?
00:28:14
Speaker
yeah And we went to a community that was more like a normal ah community of like. went church street market. yeah yeah It's a community of first generation immigrants. Right.
00:28:25
Speaker
And they they had no problems with billionaires. Yeah, they like billionaires. They were like, great. fine And then we went to the London School of Economics. The London School of Economics, where they are literally minting potential billionaires. They hate it. They were like, you know, down with billionaires. So it was funny because, of course, we already had these preconceived notions about how people would vote on things. And it turned out to be a complete flip flop, which was great. Which is great.
00:28:52
Speaker
um So those are the kind of things that happen. And then we had a presentation at some point, as mentioned, of the data. And instead of being like, oh, yeah, well, of course, everybody voted like that. It brought up all of these different topics of how people see things in their communities. Right. We actually ended up talking and are still in and dialogue with the Greater London Authority because they have a whole group that's focused on basically community polling. and how they do it is ah it's definitely a digital survey first solution. But they'll run a survey for six months and get about five...
00:29:30
Speaker
thousand reactions. We did it in three days and got 500. Then we talked to 500 different people. So like it was like it was and we knew much more about the stories of why communities would go this way or that.
00:29:45
Speaker
So it was really great. And it really this this that project really helped to change what our whole focus is. And I will say one little thing without letting any kind of cat out of a bag is that we are working on a digital, like taking that and and putting it into a digital format, but we want to keep it in the same spirit, right? So that takes a little extra time to say, like, we want to keep the handmade aspect. We want to have people, and we want people to have control yeah whatever this tool is, that we're just the facilitators, but they actually are, ah have the technology. So we're kind of working on that, but we want to keep it definitely in the,
00:30:26
Speaker
spirit and mission of the data vandals. So, so this, okay, so this, this is great. So this brings me to, i think three questions. So let me, let me work backwards. Cause the, the, the greater London authority survey question is really interesting because I wonder whether,
00:30:42
Speaker
kind of Jen, to your point earlier, whether people feel responding to a survey from the city or the government versus putting a sticker on a thing or, you know, whatever it is, and then talking with people on the street, like those are just two fundamentally different ways to provide your personal information to an organization or a person.
00:31:05
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. well I feel the same. And and I guess I wonder if like if if the if the GLA was like, we want you to do a survey on this thing that we would have done digitally. We want you to do it.
00:31:16
Speaker
how the results might differ just because of the nature of the, of the action. So what's, what's yes. And then the other thing that people ah talk to us about is bias, right? Because I think what you're getting at is that there's an inherent bias in doing it in person, that it might skew more positive and more negative or something like that. And I think it absolutely is true. or the opposite, where people are trying to answer the questions in a way they think people want to get the information. Sure. right.
00:31:46
Speaker
Sure. You know, where you're like, oh, I got to check the boxes correctly or I'm going to get in trouble or something. And what I found really interesting about, so I gave a presentation about this and this brilliant data scientist stood up and said, well, what does the data say? And I was like, it didn't matter.
00:32:03
Speaker
Right. The data didn't matter. It didn't Right. the data matter was different The goal is different. Yeah. Yeah. Like the conversations were fascinating. the The sentiment of different people understanding how different communities kind of felt. And to that end, our friends in the Church Street Market did not respond when we asked them in the prompt, would you like to contribute to us for a survey for the city?
00:32:26
Speaker
They were like, no, thank you. Right. But our friends at the at King's College were like, give it to me. Like they were like, they were like super aggressive. Because they're like, yeah, because they're used to that. They wanted to have their say. They wanted to have their say and they're used to their say being heard. Absolutely. And, you know, respected. And and so, yeah, but like as a suspicious New Yorker also, yeah I get it, right? Somebody comes up to me and I'm like, no, like um automatically get away. automatically no yeah right multiple what do you want okay two more um
00:33:02
Speaker
I'm curious about the sort of data literacy part. So you've got this essentially a scatter plot, which not everybody knows how to read. And I'm curious if you've seen with those charts or other chart types or even things that maybe we wouldn't call a chart, right? Just like a thing that you created where people do something.
00:33:21
Speaker
Have you found the need to explain it and and and how that works? Like, how does it work in that process, you know facilitating more engagement or less engagement? Do you want me to it do you I mean, I think we we definitely explain, right? ah As teachers, you know we give a very simple explanation, especially for the scatter plot. And because pop culture, people recognize it, sort of. yeah Except when you're a little bit older, you're like, what the heck is this? um I would love to find a way to do it in a different way. And I think we're always in discussion about how to do it differently, um how to make it more interesting. have totally different answer.
00:34:02
Speaker
Well, you can have your turn in a minute. a Because for me, I'm like putting a sticker. I think this is from the artist's point of view, putting a sticker on this scatterplot or whatever. I'm like, it has been done so much.
00:34:16
Speaker
Yeah. it's Very common. And I'm always, we always are brainstorming what's a, what's a more unique way of gathering people's opinions and data. So yeah it's an ongoing discussion.
00:34:27
Speaker
yeah Yes. Well, so this ah opinion matrix, this scatter, this quadrant um was definitely something, it was a part of the hypothesis. Would people understand how to do it?
00:34:40
Speaker
then the second question was, do Jennifer and I need to be there to explain it? Yeah. Right. And so there was this really this ah this very clear moment where I realized that anyone could get it um So again, at the Church Street Market, ah fluency, language, numeracy, whatever you want to call it, ah very, ah very widespread.
00:35:05
Speaker
And I remember i walked up to this older lady who I don't really think spoke much English at all. And I said, would you like, could we hear your opinion?
00:35:16
Speaker
And ah she was like, ah on what? And I said, one of the subjects was foxes, because in London, foxes are seen as a real nuisance by some, but they're still kind of like cute animals. Right. And so I asked this old lady, this older lady, ah like, and she was like, well, and what? I was like, what do you think about foxes? And she said, the biscuits. I said, no, no, no the animals.
00:35:42
Speaker
And she's like, oh, I fucking hate them. Like straight out. And then i was like, and then i took the sticker and I put it on the poster of like trashy or tacky and whatever.
00:35:55
Speaker
And then she was off. She just grabbed started of doing it. Like I didn't have to explain another subject or anything. She just had it. We had children just see it, get the sticker and go. Right. So I felt like the the I felt like that was also very ah obvious to people. And to to Jen's point, because people are kind of familiar with stickers, I think there's another kind of 2.5 in there, which is that I think ah everyone likes putting stickers on things, but adults don't really have a reason to put stickers on. So that's also another little joyous kind of. Yeah.
00:36:33
Speaker
circumstance And then the other part was that because there was always someone holding the stupid little aluminum stand. um They were able to be like, well, this is what's happening.
00:36:44
Speaker
Like, yeah you had a person that could not. Yeah. And and not encouraged. That's not where i was going is that it was never us. It was very rarely us. And so other people were basically explaining to the public. Yeah.
00:36:59
Speaker
but yeah but But we were there, but oftentimes we were off sides having deeper conversations. Oh, yeah. So there would be this person and by person, we mean somebody that we actually know and is a wonderful, very intelligent person who works for Canva. And he was holding the sign.
00:37:15
Speaker
But being very quiet, very reserved about like he wasn't interjecting that much, but people were getting it. And then we were over here. One person that guy was talking the whole time. They were yeah it was these great conversations. The point is, we were there. We were like, I was talking about foxes over here. You might be over here talking about any data, the world of data, whatever.
00:37:34
Speaker
So everybody was just like blah, blah, blah, chatting the whole time. Yeah. yeah Which we love. Okay, one more question for you. So I think we started this conversation with the Washington Monument after Rivaldi in um in Central Park. And now we've gone all the way to people putting stickers on essentially scatter plots. And i'm I'm curious about how you how you think now about the directionality of the work. So the first one is really you kind of communicating out to people and now they are providing you with their data and you're also having these conversations. And I and i wonder, have you is that now that's the is that the prime way that you think about building these sorts of installations and exhibits?
00:38:20
Speaker
Well, we last summer, But we're always coming up with these kind of ideas and kind of daring ourselves to kind of go one step further. And so last summer we had done some, we started doing some workshops.
00:38:32
Speaker
They were kind of straightforward. They're also kind of like, here's the paper, put put stickers on it. And then we had this idea, Jen was like, But it's just like a piece of paper. It's not like art.
00:38:42
Speaker
And so we were like, well, let's do this whole exhibition, this whole data art exhibition with strangers. And I was like, let's do it in two days and 48 hours. And we're like, yeah, let's do it. So we did one in in the Netherlands and then we did one in Budapest.
00:38:57
Speaker
um So we had actually 11 people in both of these. Everyone walks and Almost nobody knew each other in both workshops. So everyone was complete stranger. um And then we would explain our work and then basically talk through the process of how we work.
00:39:12
Speaker
And then everyone makes gets into groups and then they do the whole process. They do the research and they sketch it out and then they paint it or they build it. And what's so been so fascinating is that everyone came up with all these different ideas. um This one really interesting, ah she actually worked for the city of Budapest. She was a data analyst.
00:39:33
Speaker
She did this whole thing with like strings and you had like a bead and you'd move it like a slider. like on a ui right and you could kind of even make like ranges of what you thought the data was which i thought was really cool it's really smart we had a guy do a thing all about um where you're supposed to urinate in the park and it was like if you peed outside or at home or in a restroom and it was a it was a venn diagram and people put their sticker in the venn diagram but it was yellow and on the ground of course Right. It's a big yellow splash. And the other thing about it is he knew that that park, I mean, we're not from that area, but they knew that the park, which is quite famous, is known for not having these public bathrooms. And of course they want public bathrooms, but they have to allocate the money to build them or renovate them. I'm not sure.
00:40:18
Speaker
But so everybody knows that you have to pee in the park. So this idea of making, like we're bringing these ideas, we're showing what we do, but we want people to localize it, right? We want them to do their own thing and i have to say it was all in hungarian it was so right it was a mixture but um most of these people are on a computer a lot of the day right so now this is a chance for them to get out use their hands and do all these things but i will say um the aesthetic is all over the place and i would not say that when you get done it's like the prettiest exhibition. Yeah. But well, you know, that's the next experiment. what i was What I tell them is like, this is a way for you to kind of open your mind to doing something else on a grander scale.
00:41:04
Speaker
So consider this almost like the entry point or like the sketch for something you may run with later next summer you do it like on a you know a huge project a projection in the park whatever so these workshops are really just a way for people to start thinking about the data differently and using art to tell a story or gather and they really push us around like je like i need more black paint no no no no no i don't mean that no no no They may say that too. But no, no, no, that's not what I was saying. It's like people's ideas that they come up with are just, they're pretty wild. They're not what Jen and I would do. And I think that's been fascinating to see all of someone take the kernel of an idea and kind of like whatever crowdsource it to lack of a better term. And I will say one other thing that we discovered is like, we have to tell our audience in our workshop, we're like, how would you think about your project?
00:41:56
Speaker
How would you react to your project? Like, where's the entry point? Does it allow people in Does it allow people to like have a multitude of ideas or like responses? And sometimes they're like, oh, right, this only opened like one little door. And I have to like, I have to start thinking again about how to let people into my project. And that's a big deal. So building explicitly off of that, at our workshop that we had in the Netherlands in Utrecht, that's where they have all these canals, right?
00:42:24
Speaker
And so one group did a thing all about the data and the canals. And Utrecht is well known because they have this thing called the fish doorbell. And it's actually a door that they have a camera. And if a fish comes up, you can actually open the door and it'll let fish into the canals, right? It's crazy.
00:42:38
Speaker
Which we had never heard of, of course, but know it's local. And so the group built, like, basically took a table and put like a blue tarp over it so it hung over the side. And then you were actually supposed to get in the canal and like climb under the table.
00:42:51
Speaker
And then you had to knock on the fish doorbell to get let out. and it was such a hit it was such a hit everyone loved and they had made they made a little like a little they made a door they had created a doorbell which you know worked part of the time and then they had made the fish that you would see oh yeah by length by length a different type of fish so the information is like these are the fish that are you don't see them in the canal but when you're crawling under this table you get to see the fish that are in the water And it was just so creative. Now, shout out to every single person from these workshops. ah there Everybody's project was amazing. So if they see this, don't think we're just picking out this one. Yeah. And give it love because everybody's project was like, whoa, that's that's just thinking on another level. I would have never come up with this. so Well, and it's helped to really shape our thinking too. Yeah.
00:43:41
Speaker
It's not just for them. It's a collaboration. And we're very much shaped by the experience of a bunch of things. I would say, I also love it because it doesn't require programming languages, right? You don't have to code anything. You don't have know how to make a thing in whatever, JavaScript or whatever. Like anybody can craft, right? Like anybody can scissors and paint and it doesn't have to be the most amazing thing, but you know,
00:44:05
Speaker
In theory, but that on that note, like as an artist, of course, that's my daily gig. But people are very intimidated. They've lost contact with that part of themselves that they have done. Every single person more like has picked up paint, scissors, glue. And they've left it behind so far in the distance. When we ask them to do it again, they are very intimidated by that. Especially wet media, like paint. They're like, I don't know do that. You're like, listen, you do.
00:44:36
Speaker
You just have to like access that. And once they get going, they do access it. And it's very, um I think it, you know, lets people explore a part of themselves that they've almost forgotten. And you can see that kind of like come onto their face. And it's a lot of fun. The workshops are really fun.
00:44:53
Speaker
That's awesome. Well, on that note, thank you for coming on the show where if people want to, well, okay. So, so a rep bunch of questions into one. Yeah. People want to find you.
00:45:04
Speaker
um i know, I think I saw you have an exhibition coming up in the New York city subway. um Where can they find that if they want to bring you in to do a workshop in some cool town somewhere and in in Europe or Asia, like, so all that stuff.
00:45:22
Speaker
Yep. So we're opening up a data vandals newsstand, kind of a data gallery, in the 51st and Lexington 6 train downtown platform.
00:45:36
Speaker
So we're going to be there for the next year. The opening is April third to fifth um It'll have a big kind of mural that goes about 40 feet on the platform and then this little newsstand where people can come in and talk to us and we'll be there every weekend. I mean, again, as part of our experiment, we're going to start it off as like kind of a gallery and it's called New York by the Numbers. That's our first installation. And so it's all kinds of information about New York and and like an interactive part where people can also like contribute to it. And then we want to have kind of a live feed eventually. We're going to invite historians in. and we So we want to have it very interactive. um
00:46:18
Speaker
So we have that and you can find it. We're on our socials also. you know yeah find Instagram and LinkedIn and YouTube. Data Vandals. And I want to plug one last thing. We actually have a huge show up right now Angeles. Yeah, we haven't talked about Los Angeles. so yeah that will stay up for a long time but take a look online it's at union station and it's we're so excited now we're going to talk about it it's too important not to talk about let's let talk about it let's talk about it yeah we're really we're really proud of it because we again um tried to build on our past projects to do something very different and um okay union station So Union Station is like the Grand Central for Los Angeles, right? It's this huge, it's the terminus of the train of the of the yeah California Railway, right? It's a metro link.
00:47:06
Speaker
It's a Metrolink, but it's been in like a ton of movies like it's got its own Wikipedia page just for that. And it's like run super beautiful. It's in Blade Runner. Yes. um And ah we did a workshop at Art Center, ah the art school in Pasadena, and they got us in touch with Metro Art. So it's really like the art group for the L.A. Metro. And they wanted us to, this kind of goes into an earlier question about if we're subject matter experts, they want us to do a whole exhibition about the intersection of- ah of Humans and animals and wildlife. Of wildlife and transportation.
00:47:41
Speaker
So it's really like a portrait of the indigenous species of Los Angeles, which is one of three biodiversity hotspots in the world. And so we kind of have portraits of five different animals um and then ah worked with ah Julian Hoffman Anton on this phenomenal 3D map ah that's like 12 feet long and eight feet tall. It's a 3D.
00:48:07
Speaker
it's it's ah It's like literally made in blender. It's a 3D map of of the entire metro area of Los Angeles. So three counties where you can see every building, which is kind of cool, and five species of animals. Right. And we had work. Okay. I know you're going to say this, but we had to work with local animal experts and get their information. So we did a lot of research and we tried to find very reputable sources through the parks department and U S government. And, but then we had to take our information and give it to our local experts yeah to have them pour over it, which they did over and over again. The project actually got quite extended because we were just looking at so much information.
00:48:47
Speaker
But I'm really grateful that everyone had a chance to put their eyes on it. So again, once again, it was like, ah ah you know, we had to work with other people. And it's big. It's it's five collaborate that's it's five walls. Each are...
00:49:00
Speaker
eight by eight by two foot deep. And then we put these giant signs on top of them. So one of them is 16 feet tall. So there's like ah a full size mountain lion that jumps over people. it's a pretty big installation and it's up through November 26. And i added a part that I hope is working. So it was a little maybe working, maybe not. But one thing I've always wanted to do is have an audio component. So I wanted like animal calls to be heard in the speaker buried in the wall so that when you're at a train station and you're learning about wildlife and biodiversity, you can actually hear some of that, right? too yeah Because we're always trying to build out the experience a little bit more each time and like create those layers. Yeah.
00:49:45
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, so the show's up now. we have ah We have an event on April 18th, so we'll be out there to give some tours of the exhibition then. yeah And then there's a the LA Arts Datathon, which is at the end of the month in Los Angeles, and that's something done by the l LA County government.
00:50:05
Speaker
kind of a big hackathon that they do will be out here. And then if people want to get involved for our workshop, we don't have any scheduled for the summer. So perfect timing. Perfect timing.
00:50:16
Speaker
Perfect timing. World's your oyster with stickers and paint and glue. so and Anything. who who even Who even knows what the materials will be by then? That's right. That's right. give It was just living rats.
00:50:28
Speaker
We're just putting rats around and having the rats. skin Anyways, it's datavandals.com. It's our website. Our email's on it. Yeah. We're friends. Awesome. Yeah, I think everyone can tell.
00:50:38
Speaker
Love having married people on the show. This is the most fun ever. All right. Jen, Jason, thanks for coming on the show. Really appreciate it.
00:50:48
Speaker
Love the work. It's great. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you. We had a blast.
00:50:55
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in everybody. I hope you enjoyed that show. I hope you will check out the data vandals website. And if you are in New York city, or if you're in Los Angeles, you now have opportunities to engage directly with Jason and Jen and their work in New York city. You can go down on the six line at 51st and Lex and check that out. If you are in LA, you can go to union station and check out the installation that is there. And you can also check their website where they have lots of other documents and photos and all sorts of good stuff about the data vandals project. So I hope you check it out. I hope you love it.
00:51:28
Speaker
And I hope you listen to more episodes of this show and that's all i got. So until next time, this has been the policy of this podcast. Thanks so much for listening.