Data Canvas: Sense Your City

Opening of international exhibitions in Geneva

On April 28, 2015, we officially launched the Data Canvas: Sense Your City exhibition in Geneva featuring 13 of the best projects from all over the world. Sami Kanaan, Mayor of the City of Geneva, opened the evening in front of an audience of 100 interested visitors at L’Abri, a landmark for young talents in Geneva (more information below).

Projects in the spotlight

City Cells

Designed by Baptiste MilésiTransmïi Studio, Cassandre Poirier-Simon and Raphaël Munoz (Aprobado Studio), with the support of the City of Geneva, City Cells is a immersive experience created exclusively for the exhibition. Using dark spaces, ultra-violet light and augmented reality, this project by the three Geneva-based artists took the visitors even deeper into the data.

Represented by fluorescent posters, each of the 7 cities of Data Canvas could be scanned by the dedicated iPad app all around the exhibition space. Upon scanning the posters, a first layer of data would grow organically on the screen, using geometrical shapes to visualize the last 20min of temperature, humidity, pollution, etc. of each city. In the background, a composition of colorful clouds would then form, representing the 3-month average of each measure, giving the cities very distinctive faces. To see it for yourself, have a look at the video made by Transmii to imagine the experience.

It Feels Like

Danielle Griego, PhD student, and Frank Lanke, Master student at ETH travelled from Zürich to join us for the opening of the exhibition. They were representing the It Feels Like team that won the swissnex San Fransisco Grand Prize. We were delighted to welcome them and showcase this great and innovative Swiss project.

We are looking forward for the next exhibitions with more informations to be revealed! Finally, don’t forget to pay a look at the photo album!

LAbri, Cultural Space for Young Talents

Originally, the space was built in the 40s with the aim to serve as an air-raid shelter. Nowadays, L'Abri is a space dedicated to exhibitions, rehearsals, exchange and artistic experimentation for young talents practicing any forms of artistic expression. L’Abri is also a foundation that is primarily oriented towards discovering, supporting and promoting young artists. We had the privilege to held the Data Canvas exhibition in this place, taking advantage of the rooms and corridors to provide the guests an immersive and unique experience.

Data Canvas: Sense Your City exhibition in Shanghai & Shenzhen

To continue the discussion around open data, data literacy and citizen sensing, an exhibition showing 13 of the best pieces from the online data visualization challenge Data Canvas was presented during Lift China 2015, both in Shanghai and in Shenzhen. CityCells, the augmented reality iPad app developed by the three Swiss designers Baptiste Milési, Cassandre Poirier-Simon and Raphaël Munoz , along with the Grand Prize winner project Sonic Particles 2.0 by Kasper Fangel Skov from Copenhagen, were the center pieces of the exhibition, attracting the curiosity of all with their mesmerizing soundscapes and intricate visuals. Eleven other pieces in interactive, video and printed format were shown, allowing visitors various ways to engage with the exhibition.

Three projects created through the Master of Advanced Studies in Interaction Design at SUPSI were also presented, such as the Open Data Installation by Mona Diab, composed of both physical and virtual elements discussing the openness or closeness of data and its impact on society.

The winners of Data Canvas: Sense Your City have been revealed!

After 10 weeks of a competition launched at Lift15, we have received 34 amazing submissions from 62 creators around the world. Our international jury rated each one of them based on various criteria such as Creativity in Storytelling or Data Literacy and helped us make our decision.

Sonic Particles 2.0 by Kasper Fangel Skov (Copenhagen, Denmark) is awarded the Lift Grand Prize. Kasper is taking home $3,000 to cover transportation costs and an all-access pass to Lift events for one year. We look forward to welcoming you and introducing you to our community!

Urban Heartbeat by Aurelia Frieland, Srivinas Ashok & Steve Pepple (San Francisco, USA) wins the Gray Area Art + Technology Grand Prize, consisting of a Creative Code Fellowship at Gray Area, $3,000 cash & $3,000 of Creative Code Classes. Well done!

It Feels Like by Lanke Frank, Tarimo Fu, Danielle Griego, Nikola Marinčić & Jorge Orozco | ETH (Zurich, Switzerland) receives the swissnex San Francisco Grand Prize. This Swiss team will benefit from $3,000 to cover the cost of a trip to one of the seven participating cities in Sense Your City and an exclusive access to the swissnex team there. Very proud of this great Swiss project!

3 more projects receive a special Maker price of $500 each in Seeed Studio vouchers and 8 are selected for online and offline exhibition.

Go and check out all of these great projects on the official website, and come see them in action at the exhibition in Geneva from April 28 to May 6. More information to come soon!

Background

After a great first challenge in 2013 on public transportation, Gray Area, swissnex San Francisco and Lift teamed up again to create Data Canvas: Sense Your City.

100 people in 7 cities have built their own DIY environmental sensors and measure air quality, noise, pollution, light and temperature in: Geneva, San Francisco, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Bangalore, Singapore and Boston.

On February 6th, 2015, we have opened the data streams from all 100 sensors, and launched the second Data Canvas visualization challenge. For 10 weeks, designers, makers, hackers, artist, data scientists, urbanists, students and citizens were invited to use the data and create powerful visualizations. Discover all of the selected ones on the official website

Data Canvas is a media network that promotes public education around civic issues. Our cities are now sentient, giant collectors and emitters of data. This data resource often goes unused, unnoticed and un-understood by citizens. Data Canvas invites discovery and interaction because it is a shared experience, as streets and cities always have been.