Apologies for crossposting * Mon, 12 April 2021 16:00 – 17:00 BST Join us today for a talk by Prof Sally Wyatt (Maastricht University)“Touching Data: Touch Me With Your Naked Hand Or Touch Me With Your Glove”. Hosted by Dr Aristea Fotopoulou, part of the the seminar Series - ART/DATA/HEALTH: Communicating public health data creatively during the pandemic. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Abstract Over the past year, many of us have brushed up our data interpretation skills, trying to make sense of excess mortality, reproduction numbers, absolute numbers of infections, percentages of those tested, reported numbers, and calculated numbers. We have been confronted with different kinds of visualisations, including trend lines, bar charts, and maps, often deployed for political ends. There is much to be said and analysed with and about these data by statisticians, epidemiologists, critical data studies scholars, and artists. In this short presentation, I will take a different approach to data and will share some details of an activity done with colleagues in the Netherlands and Canada, during the summer of 2020. Our activity was inspired by the Dear Data project [THE PROJECT — Dear Data (dear-data.com)] of Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec. We focused on touch. Corona symptoms include loss of the senses of taste and smell. But much of the official advice, certainly in the early weeks of the pandemic, warned us to keep physical distance, not to touch other people and certainly to wash our hands thoroughly after every encounter with potentially virus-carrying surfaces and objects. Indirectly, the corona virus has also affected our sense of touch. That is what we explored in our collective project. During the presentation, I will share details of the activity and some of the data and their visualization that we produced. This is very much work-in-progress. During the discussion we would welcome both feedback and suggestions for future collaboration. Calgary-based colleagues: Ariel Ducey, Martina Kelly & Pratim Sengupta Maastricht-based colleagues: Anna Harris, Candida Sanchez Burmester & Andrea Wojczik *Leonard Cohen: Dance me to the end of love (1984) Speaker bio: Sally Wyatt <https://sallywyatt.nl/> is Professor of Digital Cultures at Maastricht University. Sally originally studied economics in Canada and the UK, and completed a PhD in science and technology studies in Maastricht. She has worked in the UK and the Netherlands (since 1999), and has held visiting teaching positions and research fellowships in Canada and various European countries. *BOOK HERE https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/touching-data-by-prof-sally-wyatt-tickets-145... ---------------------------- The seminar series 'Communicating public health data creatively during the pandemic' is organised by ART/DATA/HEALTH project (University of Brighton, funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council). Find out more here: [https://www.artdatahealth.org<https://www.artdatahealth.org/> Join us in an exciting online seminar series with international speakers exploring how health data have been communicated during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on creative and artistic representations of data. The series includes perspectives and approaches to data from bioart, community art, participatory dance, media art, film, animation and more traditional forms of data viz. For full programme, abstracts and bookings: https://tinyurl.com/ybcrbzu8 All webinars will be recorded and made available from the ART/DATA/HEALTH project website. Best wishes Aristea ----------------------------- Dr Aristea Fotopoulou UKRI-AHRC Innovation Fellow PI ART/DATA/HEALTH project https://www.artdatahealth.org PI Impact of COVID-19 on arts and health charities (UKRI QR-SPF) University of Brighton, UK A.Fotopoulou@brighton.ac.uk @aristeaf | https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/persons/aristea-fotopoulou