5.2.5 4x6
Data Interpretation - Visualisation
I bet none of my tutors would've expected me to pick the only brief that addresses visual form. What a complete surprise.
'Find a public dataset that relates to something you believe matters' - NASA - 'transformed into visual form'
So, I picked NASA as a dataset to look into. Not because of any social, environmental or industrial purposes, but more philosophical. I do believe the NASA dataset matters. Because it provides us with opportunity to learn about our existence itself. What we're made of, where we come from, and how everything is connected. Everything that makes up our bodies was forged in ancient stars. It's important to learn because we're not separate from the universe, but a continuation of it.
In 1983, physicist Brandon Carter proposed that we can’t observe universe-ending catastrophes because if they had happened, we wouldn’t be here to observe them.
He called it the Anthropic principle.
David Deutsch later proved mathematically that our act of asking “why does the universe exist?” is the universe examining itself.
“You are not atoms experiencing the universe. You are the universe briefly arranged into a form that can experience itself.”
What a mesmerising ideology, right?
I wanted to create an image reflecting this. Not infographic or educational, but expressive and emotive. Because it's what I like and what relaxes me.
Initially, I experimented with different elements. The eye of a bird, cat, frog, fish, even insects, all the way to bacteria cells. I wanted to show the connection between all life. The universe being experienced from different perspectives. I eventually scrapped that idea because it felt too complicated, ended up overloading the image. I find that to be a great weakness of mine. I think too big and have a hard time stripping it down.
I kept the image simple, vague. But beautiful to look at. Looking at it doesn't give you answers or context, and it shouldn't. That's not how the universe works.
I used Procreate for this one.
I also feel like the point might be for me to speak about the tools I used more, not my life philosophies. At least it makes the post sound more interesting?
