Code for Princeton, a community of volunteers who work with municipal government to solve local problems using technology, is teaming up with West Windsor Arts Council to present Data and Art Hackathon on Sunday, Oct. 23.
The free day-long event, to be held at the West Windsor Arts Center from 9 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., will bring together local artists, techies, community members, and designers to explore the possibilities of art in data produced by the community.
They will create projects in physical and digital realm to create aesthetic forms and artistic works from the digital data to help bring awareness and positive impact in the community. A panel of distinguished community members will evaluate projects at the end of the day and offer feedback.
Steven Fragale, researching artist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Digital Media Lab, will deliver the keynote speech at 5 p.m. Earlier in the day, he will create some stunning visuals (in a virtual reality environment) to investigate and illustrate water toxicity levels.
Code for Princeton, a Code for America Brigade, is a local volunteer group that works on local issues to help make government work better for everyone. Their mission includes improving access to public data, developing web and mobile apps that address local issues, and building a civic hacking community in Princeton.
“Code for Princeton essentially is about the community and the coming together of diverse skills, individuals and perspectives,” said says Hema Malini Waghray, Director and UX Researcher for Code for Princeton. “At the art hackathon we will recognize the importance of art in building strong and balanced communities as well as a balance between both left and right sides of the brain.”
“When I heard about Code for Princeton and their Hackathons, I was immediately excited and intrigued by the idea of introducing art into the mix. The visualization of data is a key component for the communication of ideas and problem solving, and this is an area to which artists can contribute significantly,” said West Windsor Arts Council Executive Director Aylin Green.
The projects include:
Water Toxicity: Create visuals based on water toxicity levels in the VR 360 environment.
Arts in the Everyday: Using data from “A Survey of Arts in Everyday Life (2002),” examine involvements of individuals in informal art activities like community theatre, church choir, or painting portraits in a home studio.
GIS Self Segregation: Visualize the self segregation patterns in West Windsor neighborhoods.
Data-Mining from Online Forums: Using a data crawl on breaking news or Twitter news to understand how and by what means news is actually created.
Bike Path Visualization: Create heat maps for the most user-friendly bike paths for West Windsor.
Uncrash: Visualize NJDOT road accident and driver data to help uncover patterns of drunk driving, cell phone usage and more.
Greengraph: Visualize electricity and natural gas usage in the town of Princeton to make information accessible, tangible, and relatable to everyone so they might think about their own personal energy consumption.
For more information about the event including a schedule of events and registration go to westwindsorarts.org or codeforprinceton.org.
