In this episode, I sat down with Jen Ray and Jason Forrest—the married duo behind Data Vandals—to talk about their remarkable approach to bringing data visualization off the screen and into the physical world. What started as a pandemic-era poster campaign in New York City evolved into street theater, interactive gallery installations, and a Piaggio Ape three-wheeler touring London with opinion surveys. We talked about how they use isotypes, stickers, and hand-painted signs to spark real conversations between strangers about everything from gun violence to foxes to billionaires. We also got into their recent workshops in the Netherlands and Budapest, and their stunning new installation at Los Angeles Union Station about the city’s native wildlife. If you’ve ever wondered whether people will actually stop and engage with data—even on a cold March day in the East Village—this episode will convince you they will.
Resources
Website: datavandals.com | Instagram: @datavandals | Los Angeles Union Station installation (up through November 2026) | NYC Subway installation: 51st St & Lexington Ave, 6 train downtown platform – “New York by the Numbers” (opening April 3–5)
Guest Bio
Data Vandals are artist Jen Ray and data visualization expert Jason Forrest. They build art from the numbers that structure our lives creating exhibitions, performances, and workshops around the world. They believe data is a universal language — and that by making it visual and accessible, communities can engage in meaningful conversations and build deeper connections with one another. Jen Ray is a multidisciplinary artist who presents performances, paintings, and sound works that celebrate female confidence and self-determination. Jason Forrest is a data visualization and design leader — formerly an Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company and co-founder of Nightingale: The Journal of the Data Visualization Society — now working across the Jason Forrest Agency, Data Vandals, and the MPS Data Visualization & Communication program at SVA, where he is the founding chair. DataVandals.com
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Transcript
00:00.79
Data Vandals
Back your head.
00:03.99
Jon
Hi, Jen. Hi, Jason. How’s it going?
00:06.46
Data Vandals
Great. Great.
00:08.82
Jon
ah Thanks for coming on the show. you are You’ve been traveling, so I’m glad we could we could find some time. um I’m excited to chat with all this ah chat about all the stuff that you’ve been you’ve been doing. Why don’t we start with intros? Because my guess is lot of people know data vandals, but maybe not the people behind who are the actual vandalizers.
00:29.92
Jon
So why don’t we start with intros?
00:29.91
Data Vandals
Yeah.
00:32.66
Jon
We can we could talk more about the project.
00:33.82
Data Vandals
I’ll start.
00:35.47
Jon
Jen, you want to first?
00:36.52
Data Vandals
I’ll start. Okay. So I’m Jen Ray and I’m a visual artist in my other part of my life and a teacher as well, but um I have my own like contemporary art practice.
00:37.59
Jon
Yeah.
00:48.73
Data Vandals
Jason and I did go to art school together way back in the day. So now through the data vandals, we’re kind of finding ways to combine our separate talents into one thing.
00:58.97
Data Vandals
project, which started during the pandemic. So I’m sure we’ll get to talk about that a little bit. But yeah, so i’m a visual artist and and that’s what I do.
01:03.73
Jon
Mm-hmm.
01:08.15
Data Vandals
so i’m Jason Forrest I’m Jen’s husband. That’s right. We’re a married couple doing work together. um Yeah, I’m a data expert. I data is expert. I worked ah at McKinsey where I led their COVID work and eventually created a whole service line called the Data Visualization Lab.
01:30.07
Data Vandals
and was a creative director for the McKinsey Health Institute. So I had all this McKinsey kind of very corporate work. um And as we were doing, oh, I was the ah the co-founder and editor of Nightingale, the magazine for the Data Visualization Society.
01:43.03
Jon
There you right?
01:46.52
Data Vandals
um And i i kind of got involved in data visualization through all this research on database history. Started with being part of the kind of loose-knit group of people focused on W.E.B. Du Bois, and then got involved in isotype.
02:04.95
Data Vandals
And so with isotype and this kind of pictorial statistics, we started to try to figure out, we wanted to get more involved with with how do you get data onto the street?
02:16.12
Data Vandals
And so as I was doing this corporate work, I was like, how do we do something that’s more experimental, something that’s much more engaging?
02:16.15
Jon
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
02:24.06
Data Vandals
And to a degree, even as an outcropping of what we were doing with Nightingale, which was a more illustrative, a more empathetic kind of version of of data visualization. and so that’s kind of how data vandals got started. um But back, I think we started in 2021.
02:40.82
Data Vandals
twenty twenty one
02:42.78
Jon
ehe
02:43.41
Data Vandals
So, ah sorry, we’ve merged from my intro to the intro into the data van.
02:46.71
Jon
Yeah.
02:47.05
Data Vandals
I kind of wanted to that it kind of made sense.
02:50.84
Jon
Yeah. So, so, okay. So bring me back to 2021. You were working at McKinsey. You were doing the isotype stuff. I remember Jen, you are teaching and doing your art.
03:01.40
Jon
And then what was the conversation? Like, what was the, what was the decision point to say, we’re going to go out in the street and build a thing that people can interact with?
03:12.57
Data Vandals
So I think what happened, we we discussed this in multiple different ways. So a lot of threads kind of came together at the same time. But I remember, so my art practice, I was working in my studio, but it was put on a hold a little bit because we were not having exhibitions and yeah everybody during the pandemic, right?
03:19.03
Jon
Yeah.
03:27.99
Jon
Right.
03:30.01
Data Vandals
Everybody was working in their own separate spaces.
03:30.27
Jon
Yeah.
03:33.24
Data Vandals
But after a while, i feel like we became really frustrated, especially as New Yorkers, with the lack of communication between people. It was only online that people were talking.
03:42.30
Jon
Mm-hmm.
03:44.01
Data Vandals
And we were like, OK, well, we’re living in this community and we have some things to say. And how are we going to speak to people? Because at that point, i think people, it almost felt very lonely.
03:55.18
Data Vandals
People were just so in their little separate boxes.
03:56.71
Jon
Yeah.
03:57.74
Data Vandals
At some point, we we knew that we could all come out into the streets together. And we also, I think Jason and I were waiting on the city of New York to make some kind of proclamation about yeah how New Yorkers were dealing with the pandemic.
04:02.49
Jon
Yeah.
04:11.99
Data Vandals
And they never did. There was never any kind of positive messaging or let’s get together and and we can do it, New York. um We kind of were like, it was just crickets, right?
04:22.11
Data Vandals
and And actually, it was kind of a negative kind of sensibility about like New York’s
04:22.55
Jon
yeah
04:28.02
Data Vandals
doing bad. And we were like, new york New Yorkers are really helping each other and banding together.
04:29.43
Jon
Right.
04:33.71
Data Vandals
And so we wanted to create kind of like a campaign. And so I created like this poster that was a poster campaign for like New York positivity and like bravery.
04:44.34
Data Vandals
Jason created a series of posters using data and isotypes about actually the unhoused in New York City and trying to get people to think about New York statistics in a way that was not all negative, like how you could kind of think of helping people or you could see the data in a different way.
04:52.98
Jon
e
04:59.29
Jon
e
05:03.29
Data Vandals
And so we had this separate weird poster campaign yeah during the pandemic.
05:03.73
Jon
Right.
05:08.25
Data Vandals
And then we were like, what are we doing? like And we were literally saying like, oh, well, you can buy your posters here for this cost and that, you know. And so it was just kind of bizarre that we had this dual track kind of social activist.
05:17.24
Jon
Yeah.
05:17.77
Data Vandals
And I think it is very much very pandemic related because everybody started doing kind of weird things. that they wouldn’t have done previously, especially from a creative sense.
05:24.30
Jon
Yeah. Right.
05:27.94
Data Vandals
So anyway, we finally we were like, why don’t we combine this together?
05:28.18
Jon
Yeah.
05:31.58
Data Vandals
And we were asked to, we were asked to participate in this fantastic exhibition um called data through design. And we were like, why don’t we use data and use performance and we can use isotypes yeah and we can use visuals and we can get together and create this project. And that’s where the data vandals kind of,
05:53.66
Data Vandals
Yeah, that’s where it started. And so what happened was, in all this research on isotype that I was doing, I saw there was this tiny little footnote that said, at some point, Otto and Marie were in the Netherlands. they did Otto and Marie Noirath did a ah an isotype puppet show.
06:09.75
Data Vandals
And that just kind of blew my mind.
06:10.24
Jon
Yeah.
06:11.19
Data Vandals
I was like, what the hell is an isotype puppet show?
06:12.98
Jon
Yeah.
06:14.07
Data Vandals
like And so we were like, well, let’s do it as like street theater.
06:14.61
Jon
Great.
06:18.10
Data Vandals
And so we our first data vandals thing is this kind of street performance where we basically took, we had 10 people line up in a line.
06:18.23
Jon
he
06:27.06
Data Vandals
And then we had done isotyes and then we had ah we had done a survey. And so we kind of broke the answers into you know each icon, each person held up an icon that represented 10% of the data.
06:36.34
Jon
yeah
06:37.40
Data Vandals
And they were kind of funny signs.
06:37.46
Jon
right
06:39.12
Data Vandals
And then the performance itself was on an unbelievably cold day, like just brutal cold. And it was like wind. And was March. I have to say, it was March data through design to give them a plug.
06:51.60
Data Vandals
We’re getting ready for data week. And they were part of that. And every year the show just gets better and better. But it was in March in the East village. It was an especially cold March. Man, I was still scarred from it And so what happened was we we had these little kids hand out the icons to the people that were holding. They’re actually holding these big isotype kind of characters, these figures.
07:14.17
Data Vandals
And then this really kind of important thing happened where it took time for these kids just to kind of figure out how to hand them out. You know, they’re kind of messy. And Jen just started kind of riffing with the audience and started asking them, Well, what do you think the most dangerous animal in New York City is?
07:32.21
Data Vandals
Right. and So what, do what do John, what do you think? What’s the most dangerous animal in New York City?
07:35.93
Jon
Dangerous animal. I mean, probably just a ah Mets fan would be my first guess.
07:40.72
Data Vandals
Oh, ouch.
07:43.29
Jon
The most dangerous animal in New York City? um I guess the rat.
07:48.25
Data Vandals
No. So according, and again, this all goes back to this open data portal, we should have said, open that is created by the city.
07:54.71
Jon
Right?
07:55.61
Data Vandals
So according to 311 nuisance calls, the Raccoon is the most, quote, scary
07:56.11
Jon
Yeah.
07:59.13
Jon
Yeah. The raccoon. and That makes more sense. Yeah. Dangerous. Yeah.
08:04.15
Data Vandals
dangerous animal.
08:04.73
Jon
Yeah.
08:05.15
Data Vandals
And we we do have these like very overfed raccoons here.
08:05.24
Jon
Right.
08:08.87
Data Vandals
They’re massive and they’re kind of hanging out in Central Park sometimes and they’re just like really bulky.
08:08.98
Jon
Yeah.
08:13.03
Data Vandals
So anyway, we just started, the point is we started having a direct interaction with an audience.
08:13.40
Jon
Right.
08:19.03
Data Vandals
And so this kind of was the kernel of the philosophy of it. It’s like not just charts, not just the digital, but get out from your computer give people the data, but also like give time give people time to like interact, to think about it, contribute their own story to to the data at hand.
08:33.23
Jon
Right.
08:37.55
Data Vandals
And so that’s kind of that’s what happened, the beginnings. yeah
08:41.78
Jon
So, so, yeah right.
08:41.98
Data Vandals
Our origin story.
08:43.84
Jon
So for, so for that one, when you say interact, it was primarily interacting with you two. And I’m curious since then, have you tried to facilitate interaction that is between the participants in addition to interacting with you?
09:01.12
Data Vandals
Yes. want to talk about, are you talking about London first? or Well, I was going to get there. So what’s funny is that we consider the project to be an experiment. Like we do retrospectives as ah as ah as an artist group.
09:13.14
Jon
Mm-hmm.
09:15.64
Data Vandals
Why are you still being negative? You love retrospectives. I do not. You love them. As an artist. Why would you say that? Because as an artist, I’m like, you do the work, you put it out there, if people like it or not, whatever. But I do think the retrospective for this project, of course, I think what you’re alluding to is that we do grow with each project and we start finding ways for people to have a closer relationship to the data and to influence or contribute to the data?
09:44.15
Data Vandals
We now pretty much start each project with with an inbound hypothesis, and we have certain things that we’re trying to test.
09:44.73
Jon
Yeah. Yeah.
09:51.06
Data Vandals
And so we we had about maybe two and a half years where it was, we really kind of feeling through Exactly to the point of your question, like, what is the dialogue?
10:01.54
Data Vandals
Like, are people just talking amongst themselves?
10:01.88
Jon
yeah
10:04.18
Data Vandals
Are they in conversation with us? And so we had an exhibition here at Cooper Union, the art school, and it was effectively a museum all about the East Village. So the 10 and a half blocks of the East Village. Right. It was called Free as Air and Water. Yeah, which is good the name of one of the things that ah Peter Cooper had said about tuition and and really education. And so what’s so fascinating about it is we had lots of different charts, lots of different signs, ah lots of sculptures, but there was just a wall with these sticker votes at the back. And we knew that we wanted to have this interaction, but we that was literally the last thing. And I think Jennifer bashed it out like 10 minutes before the opening.
10:49.63
Jon
Wow.
10:49.75
Data Vandals
And just stickers on white pieces of paper. are you a data newbie? Are you experienced blah, blah, blah. And people went insane. Like they, we ended up giving out like 2000 stickers in three days.
10:59.60
Jon
Yeah.
11:04.01
Data Vandals
Yeah. um And you could totally start to see these trends and they became these really places where people would stay and have conversations and husbands and wives would get into conversations about the data because they would kind of expect one person to say something differently. Well, allow people to meet each other.
11:23.42
Data Vandals
and oh yes, absolutely. That’s another thing is that when ah as an as an artist, you know I’ll have an exhibition and in the exhibition will be all these people that are kind of similar in some way.
11:27.04
Jon
Yeah.
11:34.94
Jon
yeah
11:35.02
Data Vandals
And the difference, which was very exciting, was at the Cooper Union show, there were all types of people. And then because of this interaction with these pieces of paper, asking questions, someone standing beside, know, like maybe this is somebody from the neighborhood and she’s 80.
11:49.69
Data Vandals
And I’m a person that’s like a student.
11:50.30
Jon
yeah
11:51.53
Data Vandals
I go to and NYU, but I’m not from New York. And they’re like conversing. And so for the first time we realized like, how special it was that, you know, we talk about the loneliness epidemic all the time.
12:02.31
Data Vandals
And this creates an exhibition that created like kind of ah a safe space to get to know your neighbor in this like really fun way.
12:07.16
Jon
Right.
12:09.72
Data Vandals
But with a little friction too, because people are arguing against things. Yeah. Well, a little bit and it was, what was also fascinating. There was a few, things I mean, we, I mean, it was a great show. We learned a lot. As you can tell, we’ve like always like doing a thing and then trying to figure out what’s going on.
12:21.11
Jon
Yeah.
12:23.90
Data Vandals
People would stay for a long time. i remember this one woman was running in her running outfit and she stopped in her tracks, came in stayed for an hour and a half.
12:34.17
Data Vandals
We ended up eventually working with her on a project. She runs a whole design agency in Chicago. Blueberry rings. Yeah. And so it was really it was really wild um that people would they’d come in and they’d stay.
12:47.00
Data Vandals
The other thing that was fascinating is ah there were times when people would come to the opening, they’d leave and they’d come back and they just go just to read everything. But I think one of our main points, and this also comes from this poster campaign idea, is trying to stop so much passivity.
13:05.43
Data Vandals
Like, I think that was another thing that really bothered us, that people have become just passive viewers to things.
13:09.08
Jon
e he
13:12.34
Data Vandals
And it’s like, that’s not enough.
13:13.01
Jon
Right. Scrolling through real quickly.
13:17.08
Data Vandals
Exactly. And it’s something I even talked to my son about.
13:18.15
Jon
Yeah.
13:19.68
Data Vandals
It’s like, don’t just be the person that stares into something. Yeah. You know, you’re going to to do something.
13:23.08
Jon
Mm-hmm.
13:24.91
Data Vandals
And so that show kind of kicked that idea off.
13:25.50
Jon
Yeah.
13:27.19
Data Vandals
And I think the other thing that was really fascinating about it, which I’ll move into something that’s very different in just a sec, which is that… um We noticed that um that that people weren’t looking at their phones.
13:38.54
Data Vandals
When you go to an art opening, usually people kind of breeze through. They look at the artwork, then they talk about movies or something. They just chit-chat with each other, and they’re hanging out with a glass of wine or something like that.
13:45.78
Jon
Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
13:49.11
Data Vandals
In our show, they were looking at the walls and having conversations with other people about what was going on the subject matter of the East Village, of their lives, of…
13:52.47
Jon
yeah
13:58.97
Data Vandals
housing, things like this. And so that was really fascinating. And so, and then actually the next thing we did after that is, um, there was the school shooting at Evaldi, Texas.
14:10.81
Data Vandals
And Jen was like, we’ve got to do something about this. And so she started kind of on her own building out this, what I describe as a Walt Washington monument of death. It’s basically like a nine foot, you know, what do you call it? Uh,
14:24.63
Data Vandals
I had a, it’s a, it’s the, it’s a black color. Monolith. No, no. It’s the Washington Monument, but it’s black.
14:31.32
Jon
Hmm.
14:31.32
Data Vandals
And I built it out of this big cardboard box that I had.
14:31.40
Jon
Hmm.
14:34.56
Data Vandals
And I put a a cap on the top of it. Yeah. Triangle. And it had a bunch of stats on one side. We wheeled it out. And a big isotype about school shootings on the other. And we put it.
14:45.18
Data Vandals
in central park And then we were like let’s just talk to people and mostly we talked to people from out of town and they yeah were surprised by the statistics and i think you hear the statistics and you know, you you you you know, you
15:05.12
Jon
Yeah. Yeah.
15:13.74
Data Vandals
refreshed anew, which is not good, but you are kind of forced to really interact and talk about it instead of just trying to hope yeah hope it goes away, which is what we do when we see the statistics online.
15:17.37
Jon
yeah
15:26.07
Data Vandals
I mean, how I’d characterize it is by taking data out of the digital world and putting it in the physical world, It just get it just it caught people’s attention in a very different way. yeah And we’ve done some other kind of gun violence-oriented awareness projects and have met people that are definitely pro-gun, but it’s never it’s it’s a good it’s kind of a chill vibe.
15:51.22
Data Vandals
like You kind of expect for people to be like there’d be like more like people arguing, and it’s really not that.
15:51.35
Jon
e
15:54.26
Jon
Yeah.
15:56.22
Data Vandals
And they’re not online. So you’re talking to a real You’re talking to a real person.
15:58.30
Jon
Right. Real person.
15:59.90
Data Vandals
So one guy came up and he’s like, I don’t think there should be any gun laws at all. Any restrictions.
16:04.98
Jon
Right.
16:05.59
Data Vandals
And of course I was like, and so I have to, I’m like, Jason, you take this because I’m going to blow up.
16:05.66
Jon
Right. Yeah.
16:11.79
Data Vandals
But, but I heard, I saw Jason having a talk with him and That was great.
16:15.77
Jon
Yeah.
16:16.65
Data Vandals
I think I gave him a hug. Yeah. So it’s like, you know, that’s.
16:21.02
Jon
So do do people do people come to you thinking that you’re like experts in in gun violence?
16:21.71
Data Vandals
No.
16:29.14
Data Vandals
no
16:29.21
Jon
or do they Or do they pretty immediately see that this is just a conversation with people?
16:34.68
Data Vandals
Yeah, ah could definitely that because a lot of people, when we were talking to them, kind kind of unloaded their own stories. So it’s not that technical.
16:41.86
Jon
Mm-hmm.
16:42.80
Data Vandals
they would They would tell us some incident or they knew someone and we would talk to them and we talked for hours and we were exhausted afterwards.
16:49.02
Jon
16:50.46
Data Vandals
We talked the entire day. And I will say one thing that’s a little side note. Sometimes people ask us, like, do we get funding or how can we afford to do this? And I’m like, look, I had a Sunday.
17:02.74
Data Vandals
Everyone probably has a Sunday. I had a cardboard box and some inexpensive paints and we put, and of course we have our skills, but we put it together and wheeled it out.
17:05.15
Jon
Yeah.
17:12.23
Data Vandals
We just, we just did We just snapped off a day to do this thing that we felt strongly about.
17:14.25
Jon
Right. Right.
17:16.86
Data Vandals
And I think anyone can do it. There is really no big technique. Yeah.
17:22.36
Jon
Yeah.
17:22.46
Data Vandals
to any of it. And I would do it differently now. I would do it in a different way, but at the time we did it. So it’s a really interesting question, John. um And it’s really funny because, and thank you for answering first, because it’s it’s it allowed me to process little bit.
17:35.67
Data Vandals
It was really that project where we also started to back away from the the authenticity of data or something like that. The authoritative stance of data, you know, almost scientific.
17:48.50
Jon
Right.
17:50.22
Data Vandals
Yeah. And it was really, it was really funny because people would bring their lived experience in.
17:51.19
Jon
Yeah.
17:56.31
Data Vandals
And I, I kind of treat it all very much like, you know, I’ve got the books and I’ve, I’ve read them.
18:02.80
Jon
Mm-hmm.
18:02.86
Data Vandals
I try to put the sources, you know, we we try to like really, you know, if it’s a, if it’s a chart, it should be labeled correctly, you know?
18:02.94
Jon
Yeah. The. yeah
18:10.10
Data Vandals
Um, But people may not agree. you know Their lived experience is different. And what ah what’s funny is using that ah the the sources and talking through how the data is collected has definitely become a bigger and bigger issue in how we have these conversations.
18:34.20
Jon
Yeah. Do you think people would approach the same statistics? And I’m not sure whether the presentation is different, but but the same statistics online versus in Central Park, do they just approach that differently?
18:50.68
Jon
So if you see this bar chart in the New York Times versus seeing a bar chart made out of blocks or cardboard, like, do you think people approach it in just a different way?
18:50.90
Data Vandals
Yes.
19:00.06
Data Vandals
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. 100%. Because we’re standing there and we’re pretty open to because the barrier I mean, the New York Times is what it is, right?
19:10.98
Data Vandals
Like it’s iconic platform for that kind of data.
19:11.87
Jon
Right.
19:15.16
Data Vandals
And here we are, two goofballs, but now I mean, very educated and like intelligent people, but we are very open.
19:15.38
Jon
great
19:23.14
Data Vandals
And we’re trying to, even when very so serious subject, we’re still trying to bring an element of kind of entertainment into it.
19:29.30
Jon
right
19:29.46
Data Vandals
Or just openness and like an experimentation, as you mentioned earlier, I think adds to this like exchange. Yeah, I think that there’s just two two things that I would add.
19:39.77
Data Vandals
I think the first is that um I think journalism, I think data journalism has unfortunately become a bit of a cudgel where people are like making a point and they’re showing you the data.
19:51.38
Data Vandals
And so you have to know what it is like, boom, boom, boom.
19:53.70
Jon
Yeah. ehu
19:54.38
Data Vandals
Here’s the chart. Here’s the chart. And i I don’t fault anybody for it. I mean, clearly I’m a fan at the same time. We’ve really backed away from a lot of that, right? Because the the real goal is the conversation. Because I think at first we had different expectations for what a Saturday in Central Park talking about gun violence would be.
20:19.19
Data Vandals
I was like ah mildly frightened of what would happen. Oh, we were we were. We were nervous. We were very nervous when we went out there and it was a great day.
20:23.64
Jon
Yeah.
20:27.26
Data Vandals
We like met new friends.
20:27.45
Jon
Yeah.
20:29.02
Data Vandals
I will add one little caveat to that is that we are New Yorkers and we did something in New York City.
20:29.35
Jon
Right.
20:37.59
Data Vandals
And that was different. But that’s that that is different from going somewhere. why don’t talk about London next? Much more controversial. But yes, we can talk about I’ll just put that little peg there.
20:46.68
Jon
No, but I think that’s ah that’s a really good point, right? Because you’re in New York City, you’re in Central Park. So you’re it’s already like a certain environment with a certain, um I guess, a tenor of the city, as it were, both politically and socially that might not hold up in other places.
20:55.09
Data Vandals
Sure. Right.
21:06.07
Jon
But Jason, your point, I want to hear about other projects and other localities because I know you’ve done this all over the world. So I’m curious what you’ve seen in other places.
21:16.02
Data Vandals
So I don’t know if it was directly after, but what came, at least in this narrative, is we were asked by our friends at Canva Flourish or Flourish Canva um to do something for London Data Week.
21:29.88
Data Vandals
ah And it was really funny because we they also helped to support our Cooper Union show. And we’ve been friends with them for a while now. And they’re just super nice folks. ah And we went to London and they said, well, we want to do something that’s going to be about engaging with the community in London. We want to do it on our space, but our space is busy.
21:49.01
Data Vandals
We want to do it in this park, but actually you can’t really do it in the park.
21:49.75
Jon
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
21:51.99
Data Vandals
and they’re like, we to do it on the street, but you can’t do it on the street. And so finally we were like, well, let’s just make a vehicle and we’ll drive it around London and we’ll actually go to the people instead of kind of hope that some of them come to flourish. Right. And this actually ties in with what we were talking about because instead of picking a place that’s safe and i’m not not saying we went to unsafe places but we we wanted a variety of locations to kind of field test exactly what you’re saying yeah
22:17.27
Jon
yeah
22:20.15
Jon
Yeah.
22:20.70
Data Vandals
So we rent we ended up renting. that was funny. We wanted to do like a bike, one of those bike things with the ice cream that you ride like typical with like an umbrella.
22:29.14
Jon
Yeah.
22:31.49
Data Vandals
And then Jen was like, it’s not big enough and we won’t have enough space for data. So let’s get one of these those little like three-wheeled. It’s a Piaggio Ape. It’s a 1980s Italian delivery vehicle, this little three-wheeled vehicle.
22:45.91
Jon
Yeah.
22:46.39
Data Vandals
And we so we wrapped it in graphics and we drove it around the city and we gave basically a survey, the Great London Survey. um And have something to say about that to the.
22:57.78
Data Vandals
Well, let me talk about the survey, then you can talk about the background for it. Now go ahead and talk about the background. I do want to say for the first time, so we we had been making everything by hand in a studio in New York.
23:07.85
Jon
Yeah.
23:08.91
Data Vandals
true. every single thing was hand painted. It took a very long time. I love doing it, so I wasn’t really complaining. But the London thing for the first time, we actually were able to make graphics from our kitchen table.
23:22.26
Data Vandals
scan them. So still handmade, scan them, put them in digital files and send them away to create a vinyl wrap in another country.
23:24.86
Jon
Yeah.
23:30.99
Data Vandals
And that was, a that was a huge unlock just to, just to be able to do something like that.
23:31.81
Jon
Oh, interesting. Okay.
23:36.38
Data Vandals
So add that in the handmade state, but in a different way.
23:36.60
Jon
you Right. Okay.
23:40.38
Data Vandals
Yeah.
23:40.68
Jon
Right. Yeah.
23:40.99
Data Vandals
Cause still think that there’s, it’s very friendly aesthetic and vibe, but um it just becomes much more professional looking.
23:41.04
Jon
Right.
23:47.10
Data Vandals
It becomes much scalable. Yeah. You know, um could resume. And so we took this Piaggio and we drove it around. and The whole idea was to give out a survey.
23:57.56
Data Vandals
ah The survey was kind of in reference to the Doomsday book, which is one of the first ah data collections in 1684. But we want to do this survey. And it was kind of like a riffing on the opinion matrix. So was like, I love it. I hate it It’s classy. It’s tacky.
24:14.24
Data Vandals
tacky That’s what they said in in the UK. And then we we have these stickers and there were eight subjects on it.
24:17.11
Jon
In the UK. Yeah. Yeah.
24:20.92
Data Vandals
And then just a printed poster. And we just invited people to put the sticker to show their opinion about these different things. And so based on other the other learnings that we’ve had from other projects, we had…
24:34.55
Data Vandals
people and other our British friends test all the subject matter and all the language. So instead of using trashy, which is something they don’t really use in London, like we were able to kind of customize the whole thing.
24:43.54
Jon
yeah
24:46.01
Data Vandals
And so What’s really funny is we thought that we would just go out and do this survey and people would just answer it and just put the sticker on and that would be it. And we’d have some kind of interesting data set. That did happen.
24:57.43
Data Vandals
But we had this like like a little poster stand. It was this crappy little aluminum rickety thing. And when you put a piece of foam core on it and and the the poster on one side, guess what?
25:06.07
Jon
Yeah.
25:10.79
Data Vandals
The wind hits it, it falls over. So what happened instead is someone’s always standing there holding onto the stupid poster in the poster board.
25:12.81
Jon
Right.
25:19.99
Data Vandals
And this really amazing thing happened, which is that a person wouldn’t just stick the sticker. They would stick the sticker and tell you why.
25:29.24
Jon
There. Oh, interesting.
25:30.65
Data Vandals
Right. And I believe it’s a psychological kind of reflection to kind of create more empathy so that people aren’t judging you on what the data is.
25:31.48
Jon
Yeah.
25:38.65
Jon
Right, right.
25:39.77
Data Vandals
But it became this fascinating exercise where people would start talking about it um and they’d talk to the person that was standing there or they talked to each other.
25:39.86
Jon
Yeah.
25:48.34
Data Vandals
It became this provocation of a conversation based on these certain subjects. Yeah. No, that’s exactly right. And i mean, we had, once again, we had a blast doing it and we met so many people you know,
26:01.62
Data Vandals
we We also, the way we talk about data collection is also quite different than when you when you hear that. I think a lot of people are very spooked by that notion, right?
26:12.02
Data Vandals
It’s like, oh, you’re collecting my data.
26:12.15
Jon
Yeah.
26:14.71
Data Vandals
And we try to also build into this the idea that we’re we’re not trying to harness your data for nefarious purposes, but we are trying to create kind of more like a community of data of kind of these shared experiences.
26:22.68
Jon
Yeah.
26:28.37
Data Vandals
And we’re not… We didn’t do with anything with it except enjoy the outcome, essentially.
26:34.18
Jon
Right, right.
26:35.45
Data Vandals
And then we we told people the outcome. Like we showed um in another project, we showed how people had voted and we discussed it and we discussed the various locations and how people voted. And some of the things were very humorous. For instance, um we had this sticker about billionaires. Like, how do you feel about billionaires on this matrix?
26:55.48
Data Vandals
And we went to a community that was more like a normal a community of like- We went church street market?
26:55.50
Jon
Yeah.
27:02.97
Data Vandals
Yeah, yeah. It’s a community of first generation immigrants. Right. And they they had no problems with billionaires.
27:06.20
Jon
Okay.
27:09.78
Data Vandals
Yeah, they liked billionaires.
27:11.22
Jon
Oh, yeah.
27:11.26
Data Vandals
They were like, great. fine And then we went to the London School of Economics. The London School of Economics, where they are literally minting potential billionaires.
27:16.15
Jon
Yeah.
27:19.54
Data Vandals
They hate it.
27:19.64
Jon
yeah
27:20.34
Data Vandals
They were like, eh, know, down with billionaires.
27:21.69
Jon
ah
27:22.70
Data Vandals
So it was funny because, of course, we already had these preconceived notions about how people would vote on things. And it turned out to be a complete flip flop, which was great, which was great.
27:28.96
Jon
Right. Interesting. Opposite. Yeah.
27:33.06
Data Vandals
um So those are the kind of things that happen. And then we had a presentation at some point, as mentioned, of the data and data. instead of being like, oh yeah, well, of course everybody voted like that.
27:44.35
Data Vandals
It brought up all of these different topics of how people see things in their communities.
27:47.40
Jon
Right.
27:48.91
Data Vandals
We actually ended up talking and are still in in dialogue with the Greater London Authority because they have a whole group that’s focused on basically community polling.
27:56.66
Jon
Yep.
27:58.78
Data Vandals
And how they do it is ah it’s definitely a digital survey first solution. But they’ll run a survey for six months and get about 5,000 reactions. We did it in three days and got 500.
28:16.17
Jon
Yeah, right.
28:17.12
Data Vandals
Then we talked to 500 different people. so like it was like it was And we knew much more about the stories of why communities would go this way or that.
28:23.58
Jon
yeah right
28:26.17
Data Vandals
So it was really great. And it really this this that project really helped to change what our whole focus is. And I will say one little thing without letting any kind of cat out of a bag is that we are working on a digital, like taking that and and putting it into a digital format But we want to keep it in the same spirit, right?
28:47.40
Data Vandals
So that takes a little extra time to say, like, we want to keep the handmade aspect.
28:50.01
Jon
Yeah. Yeah.
28:52.28
Data Vandals
We want to have people, and we want people to have control over whatever this tool is, that we’re just the facilitators, but they actually are ah have the technology.
28:56.22
Jon
yeah
29:01.85
Data Vandals
So we’re kind of working on that, but we want to keep it definitely in the spirit and mission of the data vandals.
29:09.56
Jon
So so okay so this this is great. So this brings me to, i think, three questions. So let me let me work backwards because the Greater London Authority survey question is really interesting because I wonder whether…
29:14.76
Data Vandals
Yeah.
29:22.62
Jon
kind of Jen, to your point earlier, whether people feel responding to a survey from the city or the government versus putting a sticker on a thing or, you know, whatever it is, and then talking with people on the street, like those are just two fundamentally different ways to provide your personal information to an organization or a person.
29:45.75
Data Vandals
Yeah, absolutely. well I feel the same way.
29:47.35
Jon
and And I guess I wonder if like if if the if the GLA was like, we want you to do a survey on this thing that we would have done digitally.
29:47.92
Data Vandals
i mean
29:54.42
Jon
We want you to do it. How the results might differ just because of the nature of the of the action.
30:02.46
Data Vandals
So what’s, what’s yes. And then the other thing that people ah ah talk to us about is bias, right? Because I think what you’re getting at is that there’s an inherent bias in doing it in person, that it might skew more positive and more negative or something like that.
30:09.74
Jon
Right.
30:16.94
Data Vandals
And I think it absolutely is true. Or the opposite, where people are trying to answer the questions in a way they think people want to get the information.
30:25.62
Jon
Oh, right.
30:26.49
Data Vandals
Sure. You know, where you’re like, oh, I’ve got to…
30:27.90
Jon
Because it’s more public.
30:29.19
Data Vandals
Yeah, I got to check the boxes correctly or I’m going to get in trouble or something.
30:30.01
Jon
Yeah.
30:32.60
Jon
Yeah.
30:32.69
Data Vandals
And what I found really interesting about, so I gave a presentation about this and this brilliant data scientist stood up and said, what does data say? And I was like, it didn’t matter.
30:43.58
Jon
Right.
30:44.25
Data Vandals
The data didn’t matter.
30:45.11
Jon
Yeah, it didn’t matter. Right.
30:46.10
Data Vandals
The data didn’t matter at all.
30:46.23
Jon
So the goal is different. The goal is different.
30:48.60
Data Vandals
Yeah, right yeah.
30:49.56
Jon
Right.
30:49.60
Data Vandals
Like the conversations were fascinating. the The sentiment of different people understanding how different communities kind of felt.
30:52.12
Jon
Right.
30:57.04
Data Vandals
And to that end, our friends in the Church Street Market did not respond when we asked them in the prompt, would you like to contribute to us for a survey for the city?
31:07.22
Jon
e
31:07.74
Data Vandals
They were like, no, thank you.
31:09.59
Jon
Right. Right.
31:11.10
Data Vandals
But our friends at the at King’s College were like, give it to me. like they were
31:15.35
Jon
yeah
31:16.29
Data Vandals
They were super aggressive towards money.
31:18.42
Jon
Right.
31:19.27
Data Vandals
Yeah, because they’re to that. They wanted to have their say. They wanted to have their say. And they’re used to their say being heard.
31:22.45
Jon
Have a say. Yeah.
31:24.66
Data Vandals
Absolutely right. And respected. So yeah. But as a suspicious New Yorker also, I get it, right?
31:28.72
Jon
Yeah.
31:31.13
Jon
Yeah.
31:32.22
Data Vandals
Somebody comes up to me and I’m like, no, automatically, get away.
31:35.96
Jon
Automatically, no. Yeah, right.
31:36.79
Data Vandals
yeah yeah mota What do you want?
31:37.60
Jon
Yeah.
31:40.77
Jon
OK, two more. um I’m curious about the sort of data literacy part. So you’ve got this essentially a scatter plot, which not everybody knows how to read.
31:51.64
Jon
And I’m curious if you’ve seen with those charts or other chart types or even things that maybe we wouldn’t call a chart, right? Just like a thing that you created where people do something.
32:00.64
Data Vandals
Mm-hmm.
32:01.94
Jon
Have you found the need to explain it and and and how that works? Like, how does it work in that process, you know, facilitating more engagement or less engagement?
32:13.84
Data Vandals
Do you want me to do it? anyway um I mean, I think we we definitely explain, right? ah As teachers, you know, we give a very simple explanation, especially for the sco scatterplot. And because pop culture, people recognize it sort of, except when you’re a little bit older, you’re like, what the heck is this?
32:26.55
Jon
Yeah.
32:29.53
Data Vandals
um I would love to find a way to do it in a different way. And I think we’re always in discussion about how to do it differently, um how to make it more interesting. have totally different answer.
32:43.19
Data Vandals
Well, you can have your turn in a
32:44.13
Jon
Yeah. Yeah.
32:47.10
Data Vandals
Because for me, I’m like putting a sticker. I think this is from the artist’s point of view, putting a sticker on this scatter plot or whatever. I’m like, it has been done so much.
32:57.05
Jon
yeah
32:57.46
Data Vandals
Very common. And I’m always, we always are brainstorming. What’s a, what’s a more unique way of gathering people’s opinions and data. So yeah it’s an ongoing discussion.
33:08.41
Data Vandals
Yes. Well, so this ah opinion matrix, this scatter, this quadrant um was definitely something. It was a part of the hypothesis. Would people understand how to do it?
33:21.34
Data Vandals
And the second question was, do Jennifer and I need to be there to explain it?
33:26.42
Jon
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
33:26.90
Data Vandals
Right. And so there was this really this ah this very clear moment where I realized that anyone could get it um So, again, at the Church Street Market, ah fluency, language, numeracy, whatever you want to call it, ah very ah very widespread.
33:46.14
Data Vandals
And I remember I walked up to this older lady who I don’t really think spoke much English at all. And I said, would you like could we hear your opinion?
33:56.79
Data Vandals
And ah she was like, ah on what?
33:56.90
Jon
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
34:02.07
Data Vandals
And I said, one of the subjects was foxes, because in London, foxes are seen as a real nuisance by some, but they’re still kind of like cute animals. Right. And so I asked this old lady, this older lady, ah like, and she was like, well, on what? I was like, what do you think about foxes? And she said, the biscuits. I said, no, no, no the animals.
34:22.87
Data Vandals
And she’s like, oh, I fucking hate them. Like straight out. this ski And then i was like, and then i took the sticker and I put it on the poster of like trashy or tacky and whatever.
34:35.07
Jon
Right.
34:36.18
Data Vandals
And then she was off. She just grabbed it and started doing it.
34:38.18
Jon
Huh?
34:39.12
Data Vandals
Like I didn’t have to explain another subject or anything.
34:40.54
Jon
Yeah.
34:42.49
Data Vandals
She just had it. We had children just see it, get the sticker and go. right So i felt like the I felt like that was also very ah obvious to people.
34:47.45
Jon
Let’s go. Yeah.
34:53.93
Data Vandals
And to to Jen’s point, because people are kind of familiar with stickers, I think there’s another kind of 2.5 in there, which is that um I think ah everyone likes putting stickers on things, but adults don’t really have a reason to put stickers on.
35:10.30
Data Vandals
So that’s also another little joyous kind of thing.
35:10.42
Jon
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
35:13.85
Data Vandals
circumstance and then the other part was that because there was always someone holding the stupid little aluminum stand um they were able to be like well this is what’s happening like literally you had a person that could not yeah and and not encourage that’s not where i was going is that it was never us it was very rarely us and so other people were basically explaining to the public how to use it
35:24.98
Jon
Yeah. Explain it. Yeah. No, no, right. oh It’s like co-learning sort of.
35:39.73
Data Vandals
But yeah but that we were there, but oftentimes we were off sides having deeper conversations. oh yeah So there would be this person and by person, we mean somebody that we actually know and is a wonderful, very intelligent person who works for Canva.
35:45.80
Jon
Yeah.
35:53.33
Data Vandals
And he was holding the sign.
35:53.94
Jon
ah
35:56.31
Data Vandals
But being very quiet, very reserved about, like he wasn’t interjecting that much, but people were getting it. And then we were over here. No, that guy was talking the whole time. they were yeah It was these great conversations. But the point is, we were there. We were like, I was talking about foxes over here. You might be over here talking about any data, the world of data, whatever.
36:14.49
Data Vandals
So everybody was just like, blah, blah, blah, chatting the whole time.
36:17.85
Jon
Yeah.
36:17.85
Data Vandals
Yeah. Which we love.
36:20.49
Jon
OK, one more question for you. So I think we started this conversation with the Washington Monument after Rivaldi in Central Park. And now we’ve gone all the way to people putting stickers on essentially scatter plots. I’m curious about how you how you think now about the directionality of the work. So the first one is really you kind of communicating out to people, and now they are providing you with their data, and you’re also having these conversations. And I and i wonder, have you is that now that’s the is that the prime way that you think about building these sorts of installations and exhibits?
37:01.02
Data Vandals
Well, we last summer, but we’re always coming up with these kind of ideas and kind of daring ourselves to kind of go one step further. And so last summer, we had done some, we started doing some workshops.
37:12.79
Data Vandals
They were kind of straightforward. They’re also kind of like, here’s the paper, put put stickers on it. And then we had this idea, Jen was like, But it’s just like a piece of paper. It’s not like art.
37:23.29
Data Vandals
And so we were like, well, let’s do this whole exhibition, this whole data art exhibition with strangers.
37:23.70
Jon
Mm-hmm.
37:28.01
Data Vandals
And I was like, let’s do it in two days and 48 hours. And we’re like, yeah, let’s do it. So we did one in in the Netherlands and then we did one in Budapest. um So we had actually 11 people in both of these. Everyone walks and Almost nobody knew each other in both workshops.
37:44.69
Data Vandals
So everyone was a complete stranger. um And then we would explain our work and then basically talk through the process of how we work. And then everyone makes gets into groups and then they do the whole process.
37:53.26
Jon
Right.
37:57.29
Data Vandals
They do the research and they sketch it out and then they paint it or they build it And what’s so been so fascinating is that everyone came up with all these different ideas. um This one really interesting, ah she actually worked for the city of Budapest. She was a data analyst.
38:13.59
Data Vandals
She did this whole thing with like strings and you had like a bead and you’d move it like a slider, like on a UI, right? And you could kind of even make like ranges of what you thought the data was, which I thought was really cool.
38:23.96
Jon
e
38:24.66
Data Vandals
That’s really smart. We had a guy do a thing all about um where you’re supposed to urinate in the park. And it was like you peed outside or at home or in in a restroom. And it was a it was a Venn diagram.
38:38.81
Data Vandals
And people put their sticker in the Venn diagram.
38:39.48
Jon
Oh.
38:40.33
Data Vandals
But it was yellow and on on the ground, of course. It’s a big yellow splash.
38:42.52
Jon
Right, right. of course
38:43.22
Data Vandals
And the other thing about it is he knew that that park, I mean, we’re not from that area, but they knew that the park, which is quite famous, is known for not having these public bathrooms.
38:43.84
Jon
Yeah.
38:52.14
Data Vandals
And of course, they want public bathrooms.
38:52.82
Jon
Ah.
38:54.38
Data Vandals
but they have to allocate the money to build them or renovate them. I’m not sure. But so everybody knows that you have to pee in the park. So this idea of making, like we’re bringing these ideas, we’re showing what we do, but we want people to localize it, right?
39:10.27
Data Vandals
We want them to do their own thing. And I have to say- It was all in Hungarian. it was some it It was a mixture.
39:15.22
Jon
so right.
39:17.30
Data Vandals
But ah most of these people are on a computer a lot of the day, right?
39:17.37
Jon
Right.
39:21.34
Data Vandals
So now this is a chance for them to get out, use their hands and do all these things.
39:21.37
Jon
Yeah.
39:24.98
Data Vandals
But I will say um the aesthetic is all over the place. And I would not say that when you get done, it’s like the prettiest thing. exhibition. yeah But well, you know, that’s the next experiment.
39:37.76
Data Vandals
What I was what I tell them is like, this is a way for you to kind of open your mind to doing something else on a grander scale.
39:38.48
Jon
Yeah.
39:44.54
Jon
Yeah.
39:45.30
Data Vandals
So consider this almost like the entry point or like the sketch for something you make. run with later next summer you do it like on a you know a huge project a projection in the park whatever so these workshops are really just a way for people to start thinking about the data differently and using art to tell a story or gather data and they really push us around like yeah like i need more black paint no no no no no i don’t mean that no no no
40:04.03
Jon
Yeah.
40:07.39
Jon
Mm.
40:12.14
Data Vandals
I may say that too. But no, no, no, no. That’s not what I was saying. is like like people’s ideas that they come up with are just, they’re pretty wild.
40:14.83
Jon
Yeah.
40:19.23
Data Vandals
They’re not what Jen and I would do. And I think that’s been fascinating to see all of someone take the kernel of an idea and kind of like whatever crowdsource it to lack of a better term. And I and i will say one other thing that we discovered is like, we have to tell our audience in our workshop, we’re like, how would you think about your project?
40:36.41
Data Vandals
How would you react to your project? Like, where’s the entry point?
40:39.03
Jon
e
40:40.60
Data Vandals
Does it allow people in
40:40.95
Jon
yeah
40:42.65
Data Vandals
Does it allow people to like have a multitude of ideas or like responses? And sometimes they’re like, oh, right, this only opened like one little door. And I have to like, I have to start thinking again about how to let people into my project.
40:56.39
Data Vandals
And that’s a big deal.
40:57.31
Jon
OK.
40:57.35
Data Vandals
So building explicitly off of that, at our workshop that we had in the Netherlands in Utrecht, that’s where they have all these canals, right? And so one group did a thing all about the data and the canals. And Utrecht is well known because they have this thing called the fish doorbell. And it’s actually a door that they have a camera. And if a fish comes up, you can actually open the door and it’ll let fish into the canals, right? It’s crazy.
41:19.29
Data Vandals
Which we had never heard of, of course. We didn’t know.
41:20.76
Jon
yeah
41:21.34
Data Vandals
It’s local. And so the group built, like, basically took a table and put, like, a blue tarp over it so it hung over the side.
41:21.85
Jon
yeah
41:28.10
Data Vandals
And then you were actually supposed to get in the canal and, like, climb under the table.
41:30.92
Jon
Oh, go through.
41:31.94
Data Vandals
And then you had to knock on the fish doorbell to get let out.
41:33.18
Jon
You see them. Yeah.
41:36.12
Data Vandals
And it was such a hit. It was such a hit. Everyone loved And they had made they made a little, like a little they made a door They had created a doorbell, which, you know, worked part of the time.
41:46.34
Data Vandals
And then they had made the fish that you would see canal. Oh, yeah, by length, by length, a different type of fish. So the information is like these are the fish that are, you don’t see them in the canal, but when you’re crawling under this table, you get to see the fish that are under the water.
41:58.36
Jon
you see them
41:59.42
Data Vandals
Yeah. And it was just so creative.
41:59.70
Jon
yeah
42:00.70
Data Vandals
Now, shout out to every single person from these workshops. Everybody’s project was amazing. So if they see this, don’t think we’re just picking out this one.
42:08.28
Jon
yeah yeah
42:09.58
Data Vandals
give it love because everybody’s project was like, whoa, that’s that’s just thinking on another level. I would have never come up with this. so Well, and it’s helped to really shape our thinking too.
42:21.34
Data Vandals
well It’s not just for them. It’s a collaboration. And we’re very much shaped by the experience as much as they are.
42:24.21
Jon
Yeah. Well, well i also i would say I also love it because it doesn’t require programming languages, right?
42:25.70
Data Vandals
We wouldn’t do it unless that.
42:31.36
Jon
You don’t have to code anything.
42:32.20
Data Vandals
Sure.
42:32.56
Jon
You don’t have to know how to make a thing in whatever JavaScript or whatever, like anybody can craft, right?
42:37.98
Data Vandals
sure
42:39.84
Jon
Like anybody can scissors in pain and paint and, and it doesn’t have to be the most amazing thing, but you know,
42:46.36
Data Vandals
In theory, but… that On that note, like as an artist, of course, that’s my daily gig, but people are very intimidated. They’ve lost contact with that part of themselves that they have done.
42:55.32
Jon
Yeah, yeah.
42:58.42
Data Vandals
Every single person, more or less, has picked up paint, scissors, glue, and they’ve left it behind so far in the distance.
42:59.77
Jon
Right.
43:05.65
Jon
Right.
43:06.68
Data Vandals
When we ask them to do it again, they are very intimidated by that. Especially wet media like paint.
43:11.73
Jon
e Yeah.
43:13.72
Data Vandals
They’re like, I don’t know how to do that. You’re like, listen, you do.
43:16.31
Jon
Yeah, you do.
43:16.89
Data Vandals
You just have to like access that. And once they get going, they do access it.
43:19.38
Jon
Yeah.
43:21.49
Data Vandals
And it’s very, um I think it you know lets people explore a part of themselves that they’ve almost forgotten.
43:21.82
Jon
Right.
43:27.35
Data Vandals
And you can see that kind of like come onto their face. And it’s it’s ah a lot of fun.
43:30.89
Jon
Yeah.
43:31.71
Data Vandals
The workshops are really fun.
43:33.58
Jon
That’s awesome. Well, on that note, ah thank you for coming on the show. um Let me, where, if people want to, well, okay. So going wrap bunch of questions into one.
43:42.55
Data Vandals
Oh, this is just getting into the exciting part.
43:44.98
Jon
Yeah, people want to find you. um i know, I think I saw you have an exhibition coming up in the New York City subway. um Where can they find that if they want to bring you in to do a workshop in some cool town somewhere and in in Europe or Asia?
44:00.25
Data Vandals
right.
44:00.41
Jon
like So all that stuff.
44:04.57
Data Vandals
Yep. So we’re opening up a data vandals newsstand, kind of a data gallery, in the 51st and Lexington 6 train downtown platform.
44:19.38
Data Vandals
So we’re going to be there for the next year.
44:19.65
Jon
Okay.
44:21.88
Data Vandals
The opening is April third to fifth
44:22.43
Jon
Nice.
44:25.78
Data Vandals
um It’ll have a big kind of mural that goes about 40 feet on the platform. And then this little newsstand where people can come in and talk to us and we’ll be there every weekend.
44:36.34
Data Vandals
I mean, again, as part of our experiment, we’re going to start it off as like kind of a gallery and it’s called New York by the Numbers. That’s our first installation. And so it’s all kinds of information about New York and and like an interactive part where people can also like contribute to it.
44:46.33
Jon
Mm-hmm.
44:53.21
Data Vandals
And then we want to have kind of a live feed eventually. We’re going to invite historians in. and we So we want to have it very interactive. um So we have that and you can find it. We’re on our socials also.
45:04.60
Jon
e he
45:04.70
Data Vandals
can find us on Instagram, whatever. Data Vandals. And I want to plug one last thing. We actually have a huge show up right now in Angeles. Yeah, we haven’t talked about Los Angeles.
45:15.57
Data Vandals
So that will stay up for a long time, but take a look online. It’s at Union Station, and we’re so excited. No, we’re going to talk about it. It’s too important not to talk about it.
45:25.35
Jon
We can talk about it.
45:25.42
Data Vandals
it’s a
45:26.16
Jon
Let’s talk about it.
45:26.70
Data Vandals
we’re we’re really We’re really proud of it because we, again, tried to build on our past projects to do something very different.
45:26.76
Jon
Yeah.
45:33.98
Data Vandals
And, yeah okay, Union Station. So Union Station is like the Grand Central for Los Angeles, right? It’s this huge, it’s the terminus of the train of the of the ah California Railway, right?
45:43.46
Jon
Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. yeah
45:46.35
Data Vandals
It’s a metro lane. It’s a Metrolink, but it’s been in like a ton of movies like it’s got its own Wikipedia page just for that. And it’s like super beautiful. It’s in Blade Runner. Yes. um And ah we did a workshop at Art Center, ah the art school in Pasadena, and they got us in touch with Metro Art. So it’s really like the art group for the L.A. Metro.
46:09.11
Data Vandals
And they wanted us to, this kind of goes into your an earlier question about if we’re subject matter experts, they want us to do a whole exhibition about the intersection of- ah of Humans and animals and wildlife.
46:21.02
Data Vandals
Of wildlife and transportation.
46:23.14
Jon
E.
46:23.83
Data Vandals
So it’s really like a portrait of the indigenous species of Los Angeles, which is one of three biodiversity hotspots in the world. And so we kind of have portraits of five different animals um and then ah worked with ah Julian Hoffman Anton on this phenomenal 3D map that’s like 12 feet long and eight feet tall.
46:47.70
Data Vandals
It’s a 3D, it’s like literally made in blender. It’s a 3D map of of the entire metro area of Los Angeles. So three counties where you can see every building, which is kind of cool, and five species of animals.
46:56.50
Jon
he
47:01.23
Data Vandals
right Right. okay i know you’re gonna say this but we had to work with local animal experts and get their information. So we did a lot of research and we tried to find very reputable sources through the Parks Department and U.S. government. and But then we had to take our information and give it to our community. local experts yeah to have them pour over it, which they did over and over again. The project actually got quite extended because we were just looking at so much information.
47:30.01
Data Vandals
But I’m really grateful that everyone had a chance to put their eyes on it. So again, once again, it was like, ah ah you know, we had to work with other people.
47:34.01
Jon
he
47:37.61
Data Vandals
And it’s big. it’s that’s five collaborate that’s the word It’s five walls. Each are eight by eight by two foot deep. And then we put these giant signs on top of them.
47:48.11
Data Vandals
So one of them is 16 feet tall. So there’s like ah a full-size mountain lion that jumps over people.
47:51.45
Jon
Wow. Yeah.
47:54.26
Data Vandals
So it’s ah it’s a pretty big installation and it’s up through November of twenty six And i added a part that I hope is working.
47:54.68
Jon
Wow.
48:02.46
Data Vandals
So it was a little maybe working, maybe not. But one thing I’ve always wanted to do is have an audio component. So I wanted like animal calls to be heard in the speaker buried in the wall so that when you’re at a train station and you’re learning about wildlife and biodiversity, you can actually hear some of that, right?
48:09.88
Jon
Yeah.
48:21.13
Jon
I hear it. Yeah.
48:22.08
Data Vandals
Because we’re always trying to build out the experience a little bit more each time and like create those layers.
48:26.35
Jon
Right.
48:27.11
Data Vandals
Mm-hmm.
48:28.09
Jon
Yeah.
48:28.79
Data Vandals
Yeah, so the show’s up now. we have ah We have an event on April 18th, so we’ll be out there to give some tours of the exhibition then. yeah And then there’s a the LA Arts Datathon, which is at the end of the month in Los Angeles.
48:44.71
Data Vandals
And that’s something done by the LA County government, kind of a big hackathon that they do. We’ll be out there.
48:50.07
Jon
e he
48:51.16
Data Vandals
And then if people want to get involved for our workshop, we don’t have any scheduled for the summer, so perfect timing.
48:57.56
Jon
Perfect timing.
48:58.55
Data Vandals
Perfect timing.
48:59.26
Jon
world’s World’s your oyster with stickers and paint and glue.
48:59.31
Data Vandals
it just
49:03.27
Jon
so
49:03.54
Data Vandals
And anything who, who even, who even knows what the materials will be by then.
49:07.86
Jon
That’s right. That’s right.
49:08.81
Data Vandals
was just living rats. We’re just putting rats around and having the rats get. Anyways, this data vandals.com. It’s our website, our emails on it. um Yeah. We’re friendly.
49:17.88
Jon
Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. I think anymore everyone can tell. Love having married people on the show. This is most fun ever.
49:27.06
Jon
All right. Jen, Jason, thanks for coming on the show. Really appreciate it. Love the work. It’s great. Thanks so much.
49:33.37
Data Vandals
Thank you. We had a blast.