Dear Data

Dear Data was a year-long, analogue data drawing project between myself and Giorgia Lupi.

Giorgia and I decided to use the language we both spoke for work - data visualisation - in order to get to know each other better, so we came up with a project we called Dear Data: a year of sending each other hand-drawn data postcards.

Every week for a year we collected and measured a particular type of data about our lives (examples include how often we laughed, the negative feelings we felt, times we were alone, our wardrobes, books, music, and so on).

At the end of the week we used this data to make a drawing on a postcard and then dropped the postcard in an English 'postbox' (me) or an American 'mailbox' (Giorgia).

Eventually, the postcard arrived at the other person’s address with all the scuff marks of its journey over the ocean: a type of 'slow data' transmission, culminating after a year in a collection of 104 unique esoteric datasets and visualisation methods.

The 104 postcards and accompanying preliminary sketchbooks for this project are now held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Two books have been published on the project: