Coffee & Viz - Solving, Dissolving: Visualizing Water's State of Flux

Water supports life but can also drown and destroy. People are mostly water, but the melting ice caps threaten our existence. Harnessing this elemental force requires a balancing act. In this talk Caitlin Foley and Misha Rabinovich, Immersive Scholar Creative Residents at the NC State University Libraries, will give an overview of their artistic practice as well as discuss their current project, which combines USGS water data with artistic renderings to explore human relationship with water.  

Caitlin & Misha work collaboratively as artists to create works that engage ideas and practices that involve sharing communities, livable ecologies, and the transmutation of waste. They employ traditional drawing and sculptural techniques within a contemporary framework of interactive media and participatory installation. They have exhibited at venues such as the the New Museum’s Ideas City Festival (NYC), EFA Project Space (NYC), Machine Project (LA), the Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY), SIGGRAPH (LA), sign-CIAT (Berlin, DE), Open Data Institute (UK), and Science Gallery London (UK). They are based in Boston where Caitlin is the curator for the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority’s art program and Misha is an Assistant Professor of Interactive Media in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Caitlin & Misha's work is sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant titled "Visualizing Digital Scholarship in Libraries and Learning Spaces", also known as Immersive Scholar.  The $414,000 grant seeks to address barriers to access and use surrounding high-tech visualization spaces while building a community of practice.  The three year grant, led by NC State University Libraries, brings together a cohort of institutions to create openly shareable platforms, tools, and resources for the use of visualization spaces. During the grant, NC State University Libraries is hosting a series of Creative Residencies, wherein artists and scholars create data-driven, digital art pieces that can be openly shared and displayed at interested institutions.