PHASE FOUR: VANCOUVER
In October 2019, I visited Vancouver, Canada for the IEEEVIS conference and take part in the CityVis workshop which I contributed a short paper and a poster. It was an enjoyable session, an inspiring week of presentations, where I met lots of lovely people from different fields. Before, after and between bits of the conference I was able to walk (and run) around the city, which was thought provoking.
I noted the lushness, the watersides, the large skyscrapers and also the low-rise living areas, and the people, some fortunate and others not so. I realised that colour extraction alone (as in Phase Two: Amsterdam) could not tell me about the people and their activities, details of the environment content, characteristics, purpose, reality, or provide a meaningful ground truth perspective, voice, narrative, analysis.
At the same time I have been experimenting with Machine Learning for creative outcomes, like many others. And I have been wondering how it could be used in the Data Walking project, perhaps in conjunction or collaboration with participants or to create new artefacts.
So I am considering a new phase focused on creating an artefact from this visit to Vancouver that goes beyond the spatial colour maps from before and explores new techniques to extract and display meaning from a place. Below is a first step, mapping the colours from photos of the city, where to next...
Data Walking is an ongoing research project by David Hunter.