[ISEA2011] Paper: Karla Schuch Brunet & Juan Freire – Data Visualization and eco-media content: Media Art produced at Digital Narratives workshops

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the material produced during the “Digital Narratives for community participation on coastal ecosystem management” workshops held in Garapuá, Brazil and Aguiño, Spain (http://?narrativas.?ecoarte.?info/?). It is a reflection on the themes and contents identified and collected by the teenagers. Alongside our analysis tries to facilitate the exploration of the materials to users and to identify topics and problems relevant to the participants, their communities and territories.

Here, art and ecology get together to produce a visual and conceptual narrative of these peoples’ lives, culture, economy, religion, territories, landscape and so on. The workshops were facilitated by a group of artists and scientists that worked together to get a picture of these two places and see their connections, similarities and discrepancies.

Art, being here a subtle form of communication and protest, uses data visualization to empower community members allowing them to visualize, and realize, facts there were sometimes misplaced, or hidden, or forgotten. The cataloguing and careful handling of the media produced during the workshops has a key role in this visualization. At the same time, we explore the software and graphical possibilities of this visualizing process. Concluding, in this paper we propose an analysis, conceptual and aesthetical, of the content and its visualization.

  • Karla Schuch Brunet is a media artist and researcher, has a PhD in Audiovisual Communication (UPF – Barcelona, Spain – CAPES Scholarship), a master degree in Fine Arts (Academy of Art University – San Francisco, USA – CAPES Scholarship), a Post-Bachelor in Electronic Art Critic (Mecad, Spain) and a degree in Communication (UFSM – Santa Maria, Brazil). She has participated on many photography and digital arts exhibitions in Brazil, Europe and the USA and got a grant from FAPESB for a post-doctoral research on Mobile Technology and Art. Nowadays, she is a professor at IHAC (Instituto de Humanidades, Artes e Ciências) and Pós-Cultura (Programa Multidisciplinar de Pós-Graduação em Cultura e Sociedade) at UFBA, where she researches projects that present intersection of art, science and technology. Karla coordinates the Ecoarte Group (www.ecoarte.info), an interdisciplinary research and art group on art, technology and environment. She also coordinates labdebug (www.labdebug.net), a media lab focus on women and technology.  karlabru.net
  • Dr. Juan Freire nomada.blogs.com

Full text (PDF) p. 269-275