research / archives — MADO TODD-MOREL

Seen & Unseen, 2015

Data Narratives

Live Bacteria dancing around.
An unusual trip of the coast revealing the magnification of soil samples. They were collected from different snowy areas in Upstate New York: Chicopee (0.5 mile from Chicopee River) and Oneida (20 miles from Oneida Lake). Locations were chosen to display the variety of soil quality near a water source and further away.
The video shows the bacteria as less or more active due to the quality of the water. This research led me to approach data narratives through a more playful and conceptual lens.
Instead of revealing the ph and soil quality with standard charts of those locations, I decided to compose a video with each frame representing its sample with different magnifications, as would normally be represented left to right on the X and Y axis of a graph.
The narrative of the dance itself moves in sequence (left to right/forward in time) with the crescendo of the music.

Work created during the US NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION (NSF) GRANT Data Narratives workshops with Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).