Unnati Shukla

  • #01 Ardak's Bicycle
  • #02 Night Sky
  • #03 Experimental Tide Clock
  • #04 Exquisite Corpse
  • #05 Sebald Device
  • #06 Nostalgia Camera
  • #07 Chai Time
  • #08 Consentful Cam
  • #09 COVID Conversations
  • #10 This Just In

    • Data Portrait

    Over the past week, I tracked the number of times that the COVID-19 pandemic was brought up in conversation, whether indirectly or directly. The vernacular we use in reference to living through the pandemic has become a sort of habitual small talk, and I wanted to explore how it has become integrated into our daily conversations. The final portrait portrays a symbol of the virus itself. Each line represents a different day of the project, beginning from the top-center and moving counter-clockwise. Each bubble on the line represents a data point from that day. The following colors show different media in which the virus was brought up: text, phone call, FaceTime, Zoom, and in-person. In the middle, the portrait switches randomly through the different contexts in which the pandemic was brought up in conversation, and

    Design Process

    I recorded the data that informed this portrait here. A tedious process, I originally set several Siri triggers to common words I predicted would be indicators of pandemic-related conversation, such as:

    But quickly expanded my list to more adjacent words and phrases:

    Once I had gathered a week's worth of data, I moved on to a p5.js visualization. I knew I wanted the portrait to be a visual representation of the actual corona virus, and sourced the skeletal framework of seven lines in a circle from another sketch I found online:

    From there, I created the random context and trigger-word (i.e. the word that triggered the topic) generator that go off on setIntervals of 1000 millis and 600 millis, respectively. I wanted the context to be central to the viewer.

    The most challenging portion of the project was next: creating a class for the "conversation bubbles." To create it, I used a nested for-loop within the skeletal line-circle framework to push a new bubble onto each line that corresponded with different days. Additionally, to change the color of the bubble to correspond with the media from each instance, I created an if-else statement within the body() section of the Bubble Class. One obstacle I ran into that I am still troubleshooting is how to reduce the processing power of this portrait. It seems with the amount of nested for-loops I used, the Big-O (THETA) of this project is high. Any feedback here would be appreciated!

    Reflection

    One aspect I learned through the process of tracking this habit was how integral the COVID-19 pandemic has become to our daily lives and the way we communicate and conenct with others. As seen in the spreadsheet, a few variables are not represented, or "lost", through the portrait: I also tracked who initiated the topic, and my relationship to the person. In another iteration, I would love to add this variable through another shape (without running into this nested for-loop issue!)