Tag: Arts and Media

Data Vandals Guerrilla Data Lab, 1-Hour Workshop, March 30: 4 p.m., Sketching & Ideas At BRIC, 647 Fulton Street, Brooklyn

Ditch the spreadsheets for 60 rebellious minutes—this session blends a 20-minute crash course on hijacking data for public art with a 40-minute hands-on activity. Armed with markers and mischief, we’ll break into pairs to craft provocative data posters and crowdsource live responses from the crowd. By the end, you’ll leave with street tactics to turn cold numbers into heated conversations.

Hosted by The Data Vandals (Jen Ray & Jason Forrest)
https://datavandals.com/

Come by BRIC before this workshop to see the Data Through Design artwork and sit in on a panel with the 2025 artists.

Agenda for the event:
*After a short presentation (20 minutes) covering our foundational Data Vandals ideas and recent projects, we’ll invite the audience to join us in a hands-on mini-workshop (40min).

*The Data Vandals will provide a topic and the participants will then break into pairs.

*We will provide paper and markers to the participants and will help attendees formulate questions in order to collect data from the larger group.

*After 20min each pair will share their poster and everyone will vote with stickers to indicate their responses to the questions.

*Once the “data” is collected (10min), we can discuss!!

Tags Arts and Media, Data Visualization

Data Through Design (DxD) is an independent, volunteer-run collective which organizes an annual art exhibition that creatively analyze, interpret and interrogate data made available on NYC Open Data. Each year a theme is developed to challenge artists to surface hidden stories, patterns, and connections in data; to examine its shortcomings; and to question claims to objectivity that data representations may project. These novel and artistic creations harness the potential for data to enliven and deepen our understanding of life in the city.

Please join Data Through Design for a panel discussion with participating artists from the Corpus: Bodies of Data exhibition on Sunday, March 30th at BRIC from 2:00 – 4:00 pm. RSVP here

And stick around after the panel for a hands-on workshop with the Data Vandals!

2025 Artists and Projects
Elias Bennett, Simon Lesina-Debiasi: Final Inch: Mustard, Data, Sauerkraut
Mauricio Delfin: The Timelines Project
HK Dunston, Jill Sigman, Abigail Regner, Mariya Chekmarova: Breath Atlas
Michelle Hui: Aging Out of Place: Chinatown Elderly
Alison Long, Cass Yao, Keyarow Mosley: Body of Waste
Matías Piña, Arden Schager: Hyperphagia
Natch Quinn: The Entirety of NYC Land
Nishra Ranpura: Tapestreet: The Fabric of NYC
Aida Razavilar, Paul Hanna: Tower of Babel: Bodies of Language in Lexicon
Jessica Reisch: Marsh Temporalities

Tags Arts and Media, Data Visualization

Únete a este evento para explorar el ecosistema editorial en español de Nueva York a través de una perspectiva de datos. Esta sesión interactiva presentará los hallazgos iniciales de nuestro mapeo de editoriales, librerías, bibliotecas y autores que trabajan en español, destacando tanto los datos existentes como las brechas críticas de información. Dirigida por Juan Pablo Marín Díaz (Datasketch) y Viviana Castiblanco (editora), examinaremos cómo una mejor recolección y compartición de datos podría fortalecer las conexiones entre autores, editores y lectores en la comunidad literaria hispana de NYC.
La sesión combinará visualización de datos con conocimientos de la industria, presentando perspectivas de editores, libreros y autores en español basados en NYC. Los participantes tendrán la oportunidad de contribuir a identificar áreas prioritarias para futuras recolecciones de datos y discutir enfoques colaborativos para construir conjuntos de datos abiertos más completos sobre la publicación en español en NYC.
Este evento es ideal para editores, libreros, bibliotecarios, autores y cualquier persona interesada en la literatura en español o datos culturales. Ya sea un profesional editorial que toma decisiones con visibilidad limitada, un entusiasta de los datos interesado en aplicaciones culturales, o un miembro de la comunidad involucrado en la literatura en español, únase a nosotros para ayudar a mapear y fortalecer este ecosistema cultural vital.

This event will be held in Spanish. Attendance is limited, and registration is required to confirm your place. Only registered guests will be admitted.

Tags Artificial Intelligence, Arts and Media, Data Governance

Open Data Week 2025 - Open Data Lightning Talk Showcase, Friday March 28 6 to 7 pm, 2 Metrotech Center, Downtown Brooklyn

Come to the NYC Office of Technology & Innovation offices on Friday, March 28 at 6PM for a lightning talk showcase, featuring open data use cases about the human brain, the environment, web domains, trash cans, and film locations. Each of the presenters will have a few minutes to showcase their work, and this will be followed by an audience question-and-answer period.

The presentations:

Arianna Zuanazzi – Exploring Child and Adolescent Mental Health in NYC: Insights from the Healthy Brain Network Open Dataset
The Healthy Brain Network (HBN) is a large-scale open science initiative of the Child Mind Institute which releases multimodal datasets capturing a broad range of clinical psychopathology in children and adolescents based in NYC. For this event, we will briefly introduce the openly available phenotypic and neuroimaging HBN datasets and present data and visualizations that illustrate socio-economic status, neighborhood crime and safety, school risk, and mental health in NYC children and adolescents. We will then explore how the HBN dataset can be combined with datasets from NYC Open Data, such as air quality and pollution data.

Surbhi Agrawal – Using Open Data to Map Regional Resiliency Risk and Assets
Sasaki Associates has developed a data platform to empower communities in mapping and understanding regional risks from natural hazards and stressors, alongside identifying critical community assets. Using open datasets, this platform visualizes data such as expected losses to populations, infrastructure, and agriculture, enabling informed decision-making for resilience planning.

Frank Noirot – Mapping the trash can landscape in NYC with QGIS and Open Data
I wondered how far people had to walk to the nearest litter basket anywhere in NYC, and thanks to NYC Open Data I was able to make a map that does just that, even though I’m no data scientist! I wrote about my process in making the map. I want to encourage others who have questions about the environment they live in to take a search through NYC Open Data to see if there is a data set that fits their topic. They might be pleasantly surprised with what they find.

Bailey Kane – Enriching NYC Open Data for .nyc Websites
All .nyc domain registrations since the beginning of the program are logged in a NYC Open Data dataset. However, actual use of those registered domains is not tracked. I was curious how people are using .nyc domains, so I started AllOf.nyc to explore all registered .nyc websites by expanding upon the data offered in the NYC Open Data dataset.

Cory D. Reeves – Simulating Soundscapes: NYC Open Data for Amplified On-Site Film Location Selection
Filming in New York City presents unique challenges—permitting, logistics, and environmental sound control measures during production are some examples. Our award-winning prototype from Autodesk University 2024’s Design & Make Conference, Dynamo Day Hackathon leverages NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) structured film permit datasets within Autodesk Forma’s AI-powered noise analysis engine, creating real-time feasibility assessments to support film location selection. This solution enables production teams to evaluate potential filming sites more in-depth, and to-scale within dynamic, virtual 3D space before more costly on-location mobilization of film crews and production staff.

Make a night of it! Before the event, consider checking out the Data Through Design exhibition at BRIC (647 Fulton St, Brooklyn), which is a 10-15 minute walk from this event. Afterwards, join us for a happy hour a few blocks away at Sound & Fury Brewery and Kitchen (141 Lawrence St, Brooklyn).

Tags Arts and Media, Data Science, Data Visualization, Environment, Mapping and GIS, Open Science, Urban Planning

By the end of this 60-to-90-minute data-driven, historically rich, Trash Can Lower East Side walking tour and networking event, participants will witness, hear and see how freely available, seemingly disparate data points can be leveraged by social organizations, businesses, community development agencies, entrepreneurs and students to generate new ideas and out-of-the-box thinking

Like deciphering secret messages, event participants will hear how data wranglers and on the ground researchers from Baruch College and New York University School of Professional Studies combined present and past data to create this data rich walk.

Inspired by litter can placement data from the Department of Sanitation, the walk will show how people can overlay unusual data sources, like the placement of trash cans, the health status of trees, the placement of monuments, museums and galleries, volunteer, civic engagement information, etc. to find places of interest, create new community gathering places, identify community needs, or even new places for food carts and businesses based on foot traffic.

The walk begins at 12pm at Kossar’s Bagels and Bialys at 375 Grand Street – near the corner of Grand and Essex Streets – winding through the Lower East side to Allen Street on the West and Ludlow Street on the East, ending at Loisaida located at 710 East 9th Street around 2pm. Networking and presentations will take place at Loisaida from 2pm to 3pm.

The walking tour research, data and route planning, and organization was done by the following people: Julia Ciesla (Baruch College), Sumedha Moturu (Baruch College) , Putri Prabowo (Baruch College), Daniel Magarino (Baruch College), Saral Tewari (Baruch College), Andrew Glasser (NYU School of Professional Studies), Moksha Shah (Baruch College), Dhruvi Desai (NYU SPS); Rafael Taiar (data scientist), and Joshua Moritz (Baruch College Lecturer, NYU SPS adjunct)

Tags Arts and Media, Civic Engagement, Environment, Urban Planning

As media today is shifting to web-based and digital-first, there is huge potential for higher dimensional data visualization to play its role in innovative storytelling. In this session, we’ll discuss advantages of 3D visualizations and learn from real-world use cases, including a 3D map of Scaffolding in NYC. We’ll also gain hands-on experience by walking through the procedure to create a 3D geospatial data visualization with PyDeck, a layer-structured python library. Learn to quickly develop and prototype exploratory visualizations and see your data from new perspectives. This session is moderated by Yanan Sun, Local News Researcher at UNC-Chapel Hill, and co-hosted by Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School.

SOLD OUT

Tags Arts and Media, Data Visualization

Too often, the data that define our arts and culture sector fail to reflect its full diversity, leaving smaller and BIPOC-led organizations struggling to fit into rigid frameworks that overlook the depth and nuance of their impact. Open data—the practice of making datasets publicly accessible to increase transparency, accessibility, and innovation—has the potential to create a more equitable and informed arts ecosystem. However, without critical oversight, it can just as easily reinforce existing inequities rather than dismantle them.
If you’re an artist, cultural worker, organizer, advocate, funder, or policymaker concerned about how data shapes (or distorts) the narrative of our sector, join us for a candid panel discussion on the state of open data in NYC’s arts and culture landscape. We’ll unpack the realities of data collection and lay the groundwork for a collaborative effort to develop an Open Data Ecosystem that truly reflects the power and diversity of our cultural communities.
This event will feature a presentation of a recent study by the Culture & Arts Policy Institute, exploring the challenges and opportunities of leveraging open data to strengthen the cultural sector, enhance data literacy, and promote best practices across the city.

RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/data-power-and-justice-the-state-of-open-data-for-culture-arts-in-nyc-tickets-1277978611429

Tags Arts and Media, Civic Engagement, Data Governance

Graphic with bright orange background and white text that reads School of Data.

NYC School of Data is a community conference that demystifies the policies and practices around open data, technology, and service design. This year’s conference helps conclude NYC Open Data Week and features 30+ sessions organized by NYC’s civic technology, data, and design community! Our conversations and workshops will feed your mind and inspire you to improve your neighborhood.

To attend, you need to purchase tickets. The venue is accessible, and the content is all-ages friendly! If you have accessibility questions or needs, please email us at schoolofdata@beta.nyc.

Thank you to Reinvent Albany and Esri for helping to cover conference costs and making it possible to meet in 2025.

And If you can’t join us in person, tune into the main stage live stream provided by the Internet Society New York Chapter. Follow the conversation #nycsodata on Bluesky.

Purchase your tickets here.

Tags Artificial Intelligence, Arts and Media, Civic Engagement, Data Engineering, Data Governance, Data Science, Education, Environment, Health, Housing, Mapping and GIS, Transportation, Urban Planning

The exhibition will be presented in partnership with BRIC in Brooklyn, NY and is open to the public daily from 12 p.m. to 7 p.m. Learn more at datathroughdesign.com.

RSVP for the March 21 opening reception.

This year, DxD asked artists to think about the concept of a corpus, or body of data, that can be physical or ephemeral. We imagine a dataset as a body of knowledge that indexes people in a community, events in a timeline, or observations in an area. But datasets are also representations of our bodies and the corpora of living things; collections of individuals, bodies of water, natural and human-made systems, the collectivity of the city. How are these bodies of knowledge born, how do they age, grow, and go through cycles – who animates them and do they expire? And, if we look closely enough, can we discern the shapes of individuals within these collectives? For DxD’s 2025 exhibition, we encouraged participating artists to consider “corpus” through its multiple meanings, such as a body, a dataset, a community, and/or an organism.

Tags Arts and Media, Data Visualization

Tags Arts and Media, Data Visualization