Data-Driven Performance Exhibit

  • Who: Class (All Hands on Deck)
  • Objectives: Design; Social Justice

Overview

The goal by the end of the semester is for us, as a class, to collectively brainstorm, define, and create an exhibit. The exhibit should be data-driven (conveying real-world data) on a topic of societal importance. This will be decomposed into several milestones throughout the semester.

For this assignment, it is imperative that you participate, communicate, and remain accountable to your classmates. We have an opportunity to do something new, different, and impactful. This only works if we all work together. Therefore, a large part of your grade at each milestone for this project will be based on peer evaluation.

What is a Data-Driven Performance Art Exhibit?

An exhibit can take many forms. Exhibits can contain visual art, performance, auditory experiences, and more. The most effective exhibits (in my opinion) are those that engage multiple senses to create an experience. In our case, the exhibit should be data-driven, meaning that the ways we communicate about our topic should encode some underlying data. In the context of the semester, our overarching motivation is social justice. That may mean that the data we work with can relate to social justice (health inequity, police brutality, …). That also means that the goal of our exhibit will be related to social justice -- to inform, to connect, to inspire, to change.

Social Justice Context: As a starting point, let's consider a dire local concern -- the recent movement around Cop City and activism against it such as #StopCopCity. In short, Cop City is a 381-acre plot of Weelaunee Forest leased to Atlanta Police Department intended to be developed into a police training facility. The #StopCopCity movement focuses on a slew of social justice concerns, including environmental deforestation, police militarization, theft of Moscogee land, and the opportunity cost of other critical uses of funding such as public health. I suggest Cop City, as it is locally relevant and introduces a wide range of social justice concerns; however, you may choose to propose a different topic if you wish. This is an opportunity to use your creative and technological skills to make a difference! For our course project, we will ultimately need to converge on a single topic.

Milestone Weighting

Weight Description Due Date
M1. 5% Role Sign-Up. Sep. 6
M2. 30% Topic Project Pitch. Sep. 18
M3. 5% Vote on Project Direction. Sep. 20
M4. 20% Within-Groups Project Pitch. Oct. 9 or Oct. 25 or Nov. 8, depending on team
M5. 10% Team Status Update. Nov. 8 or Nov. 29
M6. 30% Final Team Deliverable. Dec. 1 or Dec. 4 or Dec. 8, depending on team

Teams

Everyone in the class will be involved in this project. One collective class-wide group project. That can be a mammoth task to coordinate and plan, so to make it achievable, we will organize ourselves into teams responsible for different parts of the projects. The roles will include the following.

Creative Directors: As a creative director, you would be one of a few students collectively overseeing the overall project direction. Your responsibilities would involve pitching an overall structure and message for the exhibit, tracking progress of the project with the sub teams, and shaping the overall vision and direction of the exhibit. Your workload would be spread throughout the semester, but would begin earlier than the other groups -- because your first milestone will involve forming the necessary set of remaining student groups that will work on respective parts of the exhibit.

Component Team Member: The remainder of the class will be broken down into N groups, each responsible for working on one component or theme within the exhibit. N will be determined by the creative directors. It will be up to the members of your team to take the message and theme laid out before you by the creative directors and propose how to best achieve that in the exhibit. I encourage you to think about different modalities you can use to create an experience, to move an audience, and convey your message -- for instance, is your message best conveyed through dance and movement? Data physicalization? Virtual reality? Will audiences observe your exhibit or interact with it? Remember that each component of the exhibit should be data-driven. Your team may choose to divide up roles within your component team, e.g., such that someone is responsible for (1) finding and cleaning data, (2) choreographing the movement, (3) sketching frames of a visualization, (4) creating a musical score and / or narrating a story to coincide with visuals, (5) recording and video editing a performance, etc. It is up to your team.

Videographers: As a videographer, you would be one of a few students responsible for recording a lasting representation of our final exhibit. While the exhibit will be put up and taken down, the video will be our memory of what the class worked on. This may involve using handheld video recorders to obtain multiple perspectives of the exhibit and making decisions about editing including voiceover, background music, etc. Your workload would be heaviest at the end.

**NOTE: You are encouraged to interface with the other teams at each and every milestone. Make sure they have what they need from you and that you have what you need from them.

Resources & Examples

Let the resources specific to this assignment serve as inspiration for the collective goal for our class in this project for the semester.

Milestone 1: Role Sign-Up

  • Who: Individual
  • Deadline: September 6, 2023

In this survey, you will indicate your skillsets and interest in each of the above roles. You will also indicate your availability for a date in November that we may meet, if needed, to film our final performance. We will try, if possible, to film during class, but we will likely need to meet on at least one Saturday. Your attendance for this will be critical, so we ask that you please make yourself available on these days if possible. If we have to meet outside of class, we will provide snacks and likely cancel class before or after accordingly. Also note that when the workload for each group is heaviest will vary, so you may want to consider that in selecting your preferences.

Update: With the exception of the creative directors, the remaining roles are now likely to be formed in an ad-hoc way within your sub-group.

Submission:

Grading: Based on completeness. Full credit if you complete both surveys on time. Half credit if you are one day late or do not complete both surveys. No credit after that. This is a critical first step to help us coordinate the rest of the semester. Your completion of this is crucial.

Milestone 2: Project Pitch

  • Who: Teams
  • Deadline: September 18, 2023

Before we decide on the direction of the project, you will self-organize into groups of 3-4 students to pitch a project. We will use this as an opportunity to collectively brainstorm.

Your group will choose a general idea for a dataset, keeping in mind our ultimate goals of incorporating arts and social justice. You may have multiple ideas for this. That’s ok during the brainstorming phase, but you will need to reach a consensus for your final submission. Note that you do not need to actually find the data at this stage… just focus on your creativity around the ideas for this assignment!

Next, brainstorm! Your group mates should independently sketch a minimum of three different ideas (they need not all be the same dataset… you may entertain the idea of multiple datasets initially, then narrow it down). Next, narrow it down! Sketch out what you envision a performance of that data might look like.

Reach a consensus. Put your sketches down, discuss so your group mates understand each of the options, then reach a consensus. One option is to use a voting strategy: after pitching all of the ideas within your group, each member can place three votes on their favorite ideas (e.g., by adding a sticky note onto the sketch).

After reaching this consensus, you may have ideas on how to refine the idea together as a group. You should produce one final (more polished) sketch of your final idea. Clean it up using pen, colored pencils, or digital sketch tools.

You will present your idea to the class, as a short video or a slide show, so that we may use these ideas to collectively decide on our project direction.

Submission: Via Canvas.

  • Brainstorming: Each group member should independently sketch a minimum of three different ideas. How would you encode the variables of the data using visual cues, sound, or movement? These need not be high fidelity sketches, but we should be able to tell what’s going on. Be sure that each sketch has 1. The name of the person who completed the sketch, 2. The sketch itself, 3. A brief bulleted list describing the dataset you are representing, and 4. A brief description/annotation of the relevant encodings, to ensure that we can tell what’s going on in your sketch.
  • Dataset description: 1 paragraph describing the final dataset your group has chosen. Remember that you need not have located a dataset just yet. Why does your team care about this dataset? Is this data that likely already exists or may need to be collected? How is it relevant to social justice?
  • Final sketch: Your final sketch will be graded based on how complete, compelling, creative, and polished your idea is.
  • In-Class Presentation: In no more than 5 minutes, sell your group’s idea to the class. What data did your group choose to focus on? How do you envision performance of that data? What do you hope the outcome would be from the performance?
  • Peer Evaluation: You will complete a survey giving honest feedback on the contributions of your teammates.

Grading:

  • (25%) Brainstorming
  • (5%) Dataset description
  • (25%) Final Sketch
  • (15%) In-Class Presentation
  • (30%) Peer Evaluation

Milestone 3: Vote on Project Direction

  • Who: Individual
  • Deadline: September 20, 2023

The goal of this milestone is for us to reach a consensus as a class. Based on the project pitches shown in class, we need to decide on the most promising direction.

Submission:

Grading: Based on completeness. Full credit if you complete the survey on time. Half credit if you are one day late. No credit after that.

Milestone 4: Group Pitch

  • Who: Team + Individual
  • Deadline: variable.
    • Creative Directors: October 9, 2023
    • Component Teams: October 25, 2023
    • Videographers: November 8, 2023

Different from M2 Project Pitch, we now have a collective group direction: an exhibit on the topics of mass incarceration and police brutality.

Creative Directors: Your goal in this milestone is to put forth a proposal for N themes or components that will comprise an exhibit on mass incarceration / police brutality. It is up to you to decide what high-level themes or ideas will work together to tell a story and create an experience around this topic. Your proposal will come first with an earlier deadline, because it will be used to shape the groups that the rest of the class will participate in. This milestone will culminate in a PDF report, with the following contents.

  • the proposed title of the exhibit,
  • “abstract” for the exhibit (~ a paragraph or two description of the overall message you hope to convey),
  • breakdown of N components of the exhibit, describing what the message of each one should convey (this is what we will use to delineate teams for the rest of the class — a group of students will be assigned to work on each of the N components),
  • supporting images in the form of a mood board — a mood board that depicts inspiration for the topic, forms that the exhibit could take, or anything else. You could consider using a resource like this one to create the mood board, and
  • a work plan, describing how you all will work together (and with us) to achieve this goal throughout the semester — i.e., will you meet with each other regularly in person? Virtually? When? Will you communicate with one another asynchronously via text/email/slack/something else? How will you communicate with and use as a resource myself, Thomas, and W.J.? Who / how will you communicate with the other sub-teams once they are formed?

Component Teams: You will begin with a description of your theme, handed down from the Creative Directors. It is your job in this milestone to put forth a proposal for how you will design a component of the exhibit around the relevant theme and message. Important: each group must nominate a team lead. This milestone will culminate in a PDF report, with the following contents.

  • “abstract” for your component of the exhibit (~ a paragraph or two description of the overall message you hope to convey),
  • description of at least 3 different forms that this could take, presented in the order of your group's preference -- this means your group will need to brainstorm first! Is your message most effectively conveyed through a performance? Data physicalization? Interactive visualization? Virtual reality? Will you create a video? Will people observe your part of the exhibit or interact with it?,
  • supporting images in the form of a mood board — a mood board that depicts inspiration for the topic, forms that your component of the exhibit could take, or anything else. You could consider using a resource like this one to create the mood board,
  • summary of special requirements for materials and the like (e.g., if you require t-shirts, glowsticks, large blocks, poster board, camera to film, etc) -- include links to examples of what we should try to acquire/purchase, and
  • a work plan, describing how you all will work together (and with the creative directors and with us) to achieve this goal throughout the semester — i.e., Who is your team lead? Will you meet with each other regularly in person? Virtually? When? Will you communicate with one another asynchronously via text/email/slack/something else? How will you communicate with and use as a resource the creative directors, myself, Thomas, and W.J.? Who / how will you communicate with the other sub-teams once they are formed?

Videographers: You will need to interface with the Creative Directors to understand the spatial relationship between the exhibits, and the interactive components. It is your job in this milestone to put forth a proposal for how you will capture the exhibit in a lasting video. Important: each group must nominate a team lead. This milestone will culminate in a PDF report, with the following contents.

  • “abstract” for your overall vision of how to best create a lasting record of a temporary exhibit (~ a paragraph or two description of the overall goals you will try to achieve),
  • description of the spatial technique in capturing the exhibit (will you film from multiple angles? Will you show a single linear walkthrough?) You should show evidence that you have considered multiple options.
  • description of on-screen goals (will you include any other multimedia in addition to video of the exhibit itself? e.g., interpersed with found footage? photographs?) You should show evidence that you have considered multiple options.
  • description of the sound goals (will you have background music? will you have voiceover narration?) You should show evidence that you have considered multiple options.
  • supporting images and/or video clips in the form of a mood board — a mood board that depicts inspiration for the topic, techniques that you could use in recording or editing the final outcome, or anything else. You could consider using a resource like this one to create the mood board,
  • summary of special requirements for materials and the like (e.g., if you already have access to or need cameras, special microphones, etc) -- include links to examples of what we should try to acquire/purchase, and
  • a work plan, describing how you all will work together (and with the creative directors and with us) to achieve this goal throughout the semester — i.e., Who is your team lead? Will you meet with each other regularly in person? Virtually? When? Will you communicate with one another asynchronously via text/email/slack/something else? How will you communicate with and use as a resource the creative directors, myself, Thomas, and W.J.? Who / how will you communicate with the other sub-teams once they are formed?

Submission:

Grading:

  • (35%) Report (requirements described above for each group)
  • (20%) Creativity
  • (20%) Cohesion / Efficacy of Direction
  • (25%) Peer Evaluation

Milestone 5: Team Status Update

  • Who: Team + Individual
  • Deadline: variable.
    • Creative Directors & Component Teams: November 8, 2023
    • Videographers: November 29, 2023

Your group should provide a one-page written status update. At a high level, you should describe:

  • How it’s going
  • What’s going well
  • What you’re struggling with
  • What you need from other teams
  • What you need from us
Include pictures and descriptions that will give us a clear idea of how your group is progressing.

Submission:

Grading:

  • (20%) Status
  • (35%) Peer Evaluation
  • (15%) Inter-Group Evaluation
  • (30%) Completeness of the Report

Milestone 6: Final Team Deliverable

  • Who: Team + Individual
  • Deadline: variable.
    • Component Teams: December 1, 2023 by noon
    • Creative Directors: December 4, 2023 before class
    • Videographers: December 8, 2023

The deadline and expectations will depend on the team. The Component Teams will assemble their final contribution to the exhibit by December 1 (before noon). Creative Directors have a slightly later deadline, before class on December 4, to ensure they have the opportunity to ensure the cohesion of all the components of the exhibit. Videographers will be required to film and edit by EOD on December 6.

Submission:

Grading: variable. Reports should all be 2-5 pages.

  • (20%) Report
    • Describe creative vision
    • Describe individual team member contributions
    • Describe team coordination strategy
  • (20%) Creativity
  • (20%) Efficacy of Execution
  • (25%) Peer Evaluation
  • (15%) Inter-Group Evaluation