Nowadays, in a more or less conscious manner, we produce, share, use, and archive immense amounts of information, through web applications and tools embedded in the mobile devices we use on a daily basis. The data we produce are often accessible to Big Data companies that, according to a commercial perspective, aim at establishing consumer profiles. Considering that this kind of approach fails to capture our sensitivity and humanity, Data Human Portraits is defined as an autoethnographic project that utilizes participant observation and the collection of personal data in order to highlight the concrete and sensitive dimension of our lives.
Self-ethnography
Personal Data
Quantification
Visualization
Data Art
The project explores the expressive qualities of the visualization of data, whose sample focuses on aspects inherent to personal experience, such as states of humor, energy and interpersonal interactions.
Data Human Portraits thus proposes a reflection on the current tendency towards the quantification of everything around us, including the most subjective aspects of human life. It seeks to question the objectivity of data visualization and its supposed impartiality, valuing the assumptions and decisions that are a reflection of this same subjectivity.
Catarina A. Sampaio
Mestrado Design de Comunicação e Novos Media
2016 - 2017
BFAUL
The data are collected by monitoring everyday activities via daily records, sensors and use of applications.
An algorithm automates the analysis of information and the creation of visualizations, using Processing.
Human Data Portraits depict subject's accumulated data rather then body images, as subjective renderings.