From Data Visualisation to Data Manifestation
Is data visualization insufficient for apprehending and comprehending high volume, high-velocity, high-variety, and high-dimension data? This talk presents new approaches that go beyond mere two-dimensional visualization — whether screen-based or printed, static or dynamic — to encompass different forms, materials, and modes of experience. Data manifestation (developed by Kevin’s RCA colleague Karin von Ompteda), data materiality, and data experience bring together data science with an understanding of materials, modes of communication, sensory perception, cognitive and social processes, and especially, good design principles. It's a new kind of design practice that is data literate and grounded in science, while remaining experimental, critical, and conceptual.
Kevin Walker is a researcher, designer, writer and artist working at the boundaries of digital and physical – specifically in curation and computation in physical spaces, grounded in cognitive and cultural theory. Author of Hackers and Slackers (2012), co-editor of Digital Technologies and the Museum Experience (2008), his background is in journalism, design, interactive media, and education research.
Kevin Walker studied journalism and media, before moving into advertising and graphic design in the 1980s. He obtained a B.A. in anthropology and mass communications from the University of California, Berkeley in 1992, before working in radio for a while. He then gained a master’s in interactive telecommunication from New York University, focusing on physical computing, applying this subsequently as senior software designer for exhibitions at the American Museum of Natural History in New York in the late 1990's.
Since then Kevin has continued to design museum exhibits and media as well as work with artists to help them realise their technical ambitions. Kevin moved to London in 2003 to pursue doctoral research in museums and technology, completing this in 2010. Simultaneously he participated in funded research projects involving sensor networks, mobile technologies, and science education. Before coming to RCA, he served as course director of the M.Res. in Information Environments at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, and worked as an artist.
