information anxiety

This little phrase stuck with me after i skimmed through the first reading of the semester. This is totally something I relate to - as a news junkie with a solitary, computer-bound job, i listen to way to much NPR and read way to much Telegraph, New York Times and CNN. I went through a phase this summer where i checked the Gallup poll daily, before I decided that it was doing for was giving me stomachaches. How can the election be so close when everyone I talk to on a regular basis, including my social conservative mother, is firmly in support of Obama? I mean, c'mon, this is Kansas.

So this is my experience with data: it's like germs. You know its there because people tell you it's there, not because you see it. Little bits of data pile up and create bigger entities and phenomenons, like sickness, and then people say, "there's germs going around." So we live with these little abstract invisible beings, and they affect us and we can affect them - but you can't really experience them until the amass into something larger and more cohesive.

Here's my objectives for project one: to bring an aspect of voting and election data from the realm of abstract factoids to that of more tangible, personal storytelling. The presidential election gets tangled in every aspect of American life, public and private, and if we are to make sense of what's really going on, we have to gather and analyze data and then use the tools of design to draw out and the patterns and stories. The ultimate goal of this motion graphic is to transform abstract, technically specific but experientially ambiguous data into a complete experience the audience can relate to and engage with.