Dear Data

Dear Data is a year-long, analog data drawing project by Georgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec. 

That is what they wrote on their site. I think they have forgotten to add that is is a really wonderful mail project.

The project:Each week we collect and measure a particular type of data about our lives, use this data to make a drawing on a postcard-sized sheet of paper, and then drop the postcard in an English “postbox” (Stefanie) or an American “mailbox” (Giorgia)!

We’ve also noticed that the data collection and visualization process has become a sort of performance and ritual in our lives, affecting our days and weeks, and inherently changing our behaviour. [...] 

But really, we also started this project to show how “data” is not scary, is not necessarily “big”, and that you need to know almost nothing about data to start collecting and representing it (just a pencil, a notebook and a postcard!).

The process:Every week we choose a topic we want to explore about our days and lives, and on Monday start our separate-but-parallel data collection.[...]

The postcards:The data drawing is shown on the front of the postcard, while the back always includes a “how to read it” key to enable the other to understand the data collection and insight behind the drawing.Also, we’re keeping records of the entire process including our notes, our preliminary sketches and photos to document how our data collections and drawing evolves through time, found in the 'by weeks' section of the site.

(The illustrations on this post are taken from Week 04: A week of mirrors.)