Lighten Up

A large-scale video installation and interactive website that pairs imagery of the urban environment with materialized climate and community environmental interaction data.

Explore climate-focused data from the New York City Open Data portal. Translate the data to an installation that reflects the impermanence of what the city’s residents treasure about their surrounding environment and makes the numbers more concrete - something community members can experience sensorially.

I was intrigued by the “Favorite Trees” dataset within the NYC open data portal - this dataset's integration with a mobile app has allowed NYC residents to provide input on their favorite trees in the city over the past 10 years. I merged this with the 2015 NYC Tree Census data to link more attributes. I aggregated the final dataset by species type, averaging fields like "Risk Rating" and "Diameter" to get means for how large each species is or at-risk depending on environmental factors. I sorted this by times favorited and then looked at the data for the top 10 most frequently favorited trees in New York City.

To bring this dataset to life and visualize it using qualitative data, I found images from NYC parks websites of the top 10 favorited trees. I processed these by removing the backgrounds and created a photo collage, layering images whose relative size is based on “Diameter” data. I exported this collage as two images: one with full opacity and one with each element's opacity set relative to the tree's “Risk” data.

To understand how these images could translate to something that could be experienced more viscerally, I sketched some potential installation setups, considering where viewers would be in the space, where the placement of the different technical elements could be, and how these factors would affect viewers' experiences.

For the final installation digital setup, I imported the two exported images into MadMapper and created scenes to flicker back and forth between the full and low opacity images.

I mapped the projected video onto the corner of room with white walls, spilling into the ceiling to create a “tree canopy” made up of light and imagery that makes climate data more concrete. New York City residents were able to walk through and experience at scale how their favorite aspects of their environment are at risk and watch them actively fade away.

A video of the final installation is available here.

Python, Pandas, MadMapper, Adobe Photoshop, Short Throw Projector

Fading Favorites

Case Study Coming Soon