Nathalie Miebach, data manualisations creator
Eyeo Festival had a few interesting and entertaining talks, however I’d like to bring attention to one in particular.
Eyeo2012 - Nathalie Miebach from Eyeo Festival on Vimeo.
Knowing nothing about the Festival, besides that Robert “Flight404″ Hodgins had done a very likeable presentation there, I watched in succession the talks from Ben Fry, Amanda Cox and Nathalie Miebach.
The three of them deal with data visualisation, however Nathalie Miebach was the only one who concretely address the “elephant in the room” of visualisation, which is that although engrained in data, it is an editorial exercise.
And she does it brilliantly and with great honesty.
Her sculpture and her scores naturally embed performance, play, interpretation and the objectivity of measurements. Sometimes she even juxtaposes measurements with her own subjective records, to create hybrid narrative (and quite colorful) works.
Her concluding remarks, that we must not forget to interact with data by touch, also brings to light that we must not let the Ipad or other tablets hijack the meaning of touch, the way Facebook hijacked the meaning of friendship. Touching is not just about finger impacts. It’s as much if not more about feedback.