Physical representations of data pre-exist with the invention of the written language. 

While our contemporary notion of data did not yet exist, early humans externalized 

their memory by encoding quantitative or qualitative values into physical objects. 

 

Over the following millennia, physical data representations allowed people to record, reflect, reason, and decide about the world in new and profound ways.

 

Creating data objects is far from a lost art, and an explosion of new fabrication technologies also introduced an ever-wider array of physical tools to support thinking and communication.

 

We are now in an era where data is an increasingly visible part of our everyday existence,

a growing number of artists, designers, makers, and everyday people 

are actively exploring the possibilities of making data physical. 

 

This class will provide the student the occasion to reflect on how data could be 

encoded and manipulated in physical objects. This class will cover first a short historical introduction, 

second some snapshots of the practices used by contemporary designers, and some design considerations. 

 

The main focus of the class will be to create a physical object to either encode data during a collective action or to represent an existing dataset. 

 

This class will be based on the recently published book “Making with Data” (https://makingwithdata.org/).