Presentation notes

Visual presentation

Zine

intro

Thesis

• present a case study in my doctoral research at the crossroads of textility and algorithmics.
• My general approach is founded in thinking of craft as technology and of technology as craft in order to highlight the fabrication process of digital work as well as the technicity of hand-crafted artifacts.
• practice-based research (pratique de recherche-création) in data physicalization

Data physicalisation

• “examines how computer-supported, physical representations of data (i.e., physicalizations), can support cognition, communication, learning, problem solving, and decision making.” (Jansen et al. 2015, 8)
• gathering examples, especially in artistic practices and/or related to the cultural field, i.e. work of Greta Grip and Lee Jones
• The translation of data into a tangible output carries many potentialities and challenges, some of which I explore in my research-creation practice.

For my presentation today

• I will begin by introducing the project Soft Data Celebration
• Present two demos of the project (2025, 2026)
• practice based research → also requires emphasis on the steps of sharing and documenting the work
  • share some of the joys and challenges I encountered in creating documentation for this project.

Through this presentation, I will try to show an overview of how I weave the creation process into the academic research, thinking about the many shapes of this data-driven project.

Soft data celebration (2025)

[share the prototype and legend around the room]

[ßlide] data physicalisation I created

• from data published by the Montreal Contemporary Art Museum (MAC) about its collection.
• In the open data about the artists in the museum’s collection, I aimed to critically engage with the nationality property.
• loosen the nationalistic constraint to recognise both indigenous and québecois identities.
• cumulative methodology
• open to participatory approach

While it is common for many individuals to have multiple origins, their representation is often treated as a visualisation “issue”.

[slide] pompoms

• Plushy pompoms represent artworks with color encoding the origins of the artists.
• The scale from pastels to bright and scintillating colors provides a soothing environment while accentuating less prevalent occurrences.
• The pompoms are assembled into garlands representing yearly acquisitions by the museum.
• In the installation, they dangle from a circular mobile hung atop a fluffy carpet.

[slide] The material approach

• translating visualisation into physicalisation
• space to add as many pompoms as necessary to embrace the artists’ diversity
• In this tangible environment, change is a simple repair made by cutting the thread and tying new knots.

[slide] Serendipity also enriched the project: the garlands of feather-light pompoms bent the PEX structure of the mobile, forming an unexpectedly “physical data-driven” Bézier curve.

Demos

[slide] In the public showings of the installation, I also worked to enable broader access both to the data and to the MAC collection,

first: June 2025

• showing the research-creation process
• steps in the making-of
• writings, data
• data visualisations and visual experiments
• material research and prototyping
• books, digital exploration
• workshop space and feedback board (lots of digital photographs collected as well)
• I was always there to welcome people and explain

Feb 2026

opportunity to share the project at the Math and CS library at UdeM

• take more of a mediation approach, as the installation would have to be autonomous
• poster made in collaboration with the UdeM’s library communication team
• plastified short explanation + legend
• large screen with digital interfaces for year-by-year exploration, a data visualization notebook and the mini-website I built for documenting the project
• smaller screen with a few pictures, especially of people interacting with the pompons (to show that touching is ok)
• [slide] book section with couches and plants
• large windows and direct sunlight that brought a whole other lightness to the appreciation of the mobile, especially the

data crafting workshop

• sharing some of my method and way to introduce the work
• but also allowing for broader approaches with all my prototyping material
• when I made my earrings (about origins and places where I have lived)

Documentation

One of the first things that was new for me in a research-creation proactice, before even documentation:

• the material reality of boxing up the work
• creating a system to be able to transport and store the installation
• (and the time it takes to set it up! Else I’d have organised a viewing for the conference :) )

And once it is boxed up, I find to find ways to bring the installation into the ways in which we usually share research: through talks and articles.

I tried to broaden the scope when thinking about how to document / archive / share the different narratives and experiences that the installation carries

thinking of different forms of access, whether physical / temporal, and also through the lens of accessibility

• Participatory photographic documentation
• Sensory audiodescription
• Open-source code
• Mini-website

upcoming / current questions

• considering format and content of the thesis
• considering a mini Zine → 1 pager format, but how to condense even a part of the story into a single page?

similarity with the challenges of DH project documentation and archiving, yet with perhaps another layer (the physical object, exhibition)

thank you! (upcoming exhibition)