Sophie Ashdown

Considering that I put a lot of time into my research paper looking at how data can be a medium for art, I figured that I need to create some of my own.

I had many ideas in my head of what and how I could create it but hadn’t actually put paint or material to canvas.

First I had to select a theme for my new art direction. Previously I have discussed what types of data I could consider.

What I ultimately wanted was a data theme that most people can connect to and engage with. One that would have a common denominator to be a theme or motif in my work, but one that would give me plenty of scope for a wide range of datasets and, most importantly, the freedom to interpret the data in many different artistic ways.

After much thought and discussion with friends I settled on the theme of Covid-affected data.

This may seem like a strange choice but let me explain a few reasons for my thinking…

• Every adult in the developed world was affected by Covid in some way. From office workers who worked from home to parents who homeschooled their children, to hospitality workers who lost their jobs to healthcare workers who risked their lives caring for others. Not to mention the millions of people who caught Covid at some point or saw their loved ones suffer from it. Many people lost loved ones in the process. I myself lost my cousin Jake to Covid in 2021. This shared experience means that everyone should easily engage with the topic and relate to it on some personal level.

• The nature of how Covid affected the world will make an obvious and intriguing “blip” in data over time. In some cases such as number of children being homeschooled would be fairly steady then see a huge spike during Covid then would mostly go back to where it was before. However in other cases such as the number of people working from home would already have been slowly increasing anyway before Covid, then seen a huge spike, then would decrease but not go back to previous lower levels. These make for some great opportunities to use artistic means to express the information and make it beautiful.
• There are many and varied datasets relating to Covid that would be interesting. Some are more serious such as number of deaths by date and country and others more fun like number of dogs adopted or types of dances performed on TikTok.
• There is a wealth of data available. Now that it is over five years since the beginning of Covid, there is a lot of data that demonstrates the impact it had and also how that data has been affected since Covid finished. For example number of commercial flights – have the numbers gone back to previous levels? All of this information is interesting to explore and hopefully intriguing to view.
• There is longevity in the data since it is fairly recent. Further trends may appear as time goes on.

I already have a list of potential topics related to covid, from the serious to the more light-hearted, including:

• Public transport usage
• Bicycle usage
• Air quality / pollution levels
• High street shop figures
• Online deliveries
• Steaming service subscriptions (Netflix, Spotify, etc)
• Unemployment figures
• Small business impact/closures
• Service industry impact – eg hairdressers, nail salons etc
• Office vacancy rates
• Public transport usage
• School attendance/absenteeism
• Use of online meeting platforms, eg zoom, Teams
• Mental health services
• Vaccination rates
• Birth/marriage/divorce rates
• Travel stats
• Pet adoptions

For now the dataset I’m currently working on is the percentage of people working from home since 2017. There is a definite shift during Covid and a change in the data after Covid compared to pre-Covid.

When the new art piece is completed I will share it here and tell you more about the process of making it. I’m hoping that all of this thinking and planning translates to some beautiful art!!