Data

Climate is an original composition by Erik Ian Walker, created in collaboration with TheClimateMusicProject.

Exploratorium Senior Artist Susan Schwartzenberg describes the Fisher Bay Observatory, which focuses on environmental science and the history of San Francisco Bay. Exhibits and displays include a map collection, real-time and past environmental data exhibits, and a carved topographic table on which datasets, such as sea-level rise, earthquake faultlines, and fog patterns, are projected.

Ryan Wyatt, Director of the Morrison Planetarium at the California Academy of Sciences, discusses the unique exhibition space of domes. Dome shows are most effective when they start at human scales and put people at the center of the action. He cautioned that data visualizations should be as simple as possible to avoid cognitive overload. 

Heather Segale, Education and Outreach Director for the Lake Tahoe Environmental Research Center, describes how the UC Davis facility connects visitors to place through interactive data exhibits and visualizations. The AR Sandbox exhibit uses projections to encourage visitors to explore the topography and hydrology of Lake Tahoe. A touch-screen exhibit provides real-time and historical data. 

University of Arizona environmental scientist Mónica Ramírez-Andreotta talks about the importance of involving the public in co-creating data visualizations. She presents two projects that used data collected by citizen scientists and, through workshops and customized data visualizations, helped them assess health risks from environmental contaminants. 

Bryan Kennedy, Director of Museum Technology and Digital Operations at the Science Museum of Minnesota, describes xMacroscope and how the project is both designing and developing technology platforms and exhibits and conducting learning research to understand and improve how the public understands and engages with data visualization. 

Exploratorium learning researcher Joyce Ma discusses lessons learned from the Living Liquid project, which allows visitors to explore ocean data sets with an interactive touch table. She covers the importance of building multidisciplinary teams, thoughtful curation of data sets, providing visitors with immediate access to data, and facilitating interactive exploration of data visualizations.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Senior Program Manager Carrie McDougall discusses Science On a Sphere (SOS), a visualization technology that projects dynamic and massive data sets on a large spherical display. Installed in 150 different locations, SOS provides public audience access to spherically rendered depictions of ocean, weather, and climate data. 

Co-director of Google’s Big Picture team Fernanda Viégas describes how real-time data visualizations allow users to engage with data in more intuitive and relatable ways. She presented the “Digital Attack Map,” which shows the origin and target countries of hackers attempting to cripple computer servers worldwide, and “Wind Map,” a real-time forecast of winds displayed as dynamic lines that users can explore.