How do we get endless excel sheets and thousands of personal experiences crystallized into something we can feel and touch? Something that inspires courage and the belief that you can take action?

We are interested in this question at INVI, because with our Model for wicked problems we collect a lot of knowledge that needs to go out and make a difference.

That's why INVI's Head of Research Sofie Burgos-Thorsen took a trip across the Atlantic, where she participated in the Data Art Symposium in Boston.

Read here how number-ringing bell towers and immigration carpets and flowers from a climate-changed future expanded the analytics manager's view of how to convey numbers so they penetrate the shell.

Sensory experiments: Rather than just visualizing charts, many of the most talented researchers, activists and artists are working to communicate data through other formats that create new opportunities to sense, touch, smell, and hear data. For example, researchers like Sarah Williams and Alberto Meouchi at MIT are working with Latin American immigrants to weave large 'blankets' that represent data on immigration numbers to the US. A strategy that gives 'cold' dead data a certain materiality and warmth. Something you can touch and feel. Others, like Matteo Bonera from The Visual Agency, have used bell towers across Italy to create a sound-borne concert communicating the number of lives lost in small towns during COVID. A form of 'data sonification' strategy that brought people together for a shared experience of data in a new way.

Data and AI as installation art: There is a growing focus among the best in the field to create physical data-based art installations, often with an element of AI as co-curator or designer. Examples include Refik Anadol, who will soon launch Dataland - the first dedicated AI art museum in Los Angeles. At Harvard, Sofie also saw an installation, Artificial Worldviews, by Kim Albrecht from metalab Harvard/Berlin, which created a unique immersive experience - they also have a pretty cool website that you can explore here.

Environmental data: There is growing attention to using creative data visualizations to convey data about climate, environment and ecosystems that we as humans have a hard time relating to with great emotional engagement as long as we convey the climate and biodiversity crisis with pie charts and boring charts we've seen 100 times before. A project like Plant Futures by Annelie Berner is a good example of combining coding, visualization and speculative methods to convey what flowers will look like in 2100 if climate change continues as it does today.

Data and AI as installation art: There is a growing focus among the best in the field on creating physical data-based art installations, often with an element of AI as co-curator or designer. Examples include Refik Anadol, who will soon launch Dataland - the first dedicated AI art museum in Los Angeles. At Harvard, Sofie also saw an installation, Artificial Worldviews, by Kim Albrecht from metalab Harvard/Berlin, which created a unique immersive experience.

The wicked problems model is constantly evolving - want to learn more about how we communicate data? Explore our new model here.

From data to action: Can we visualize dry numbers with warm blankets?

Three new INVI members. Three different points of view. One common will for change.