DATA PARA TODES

a project by Lina Maria Giraldo
Project website: http://dataparatodes.com/
Exhibition Dates: Friday, November 4 - Sunday, December 18, 2022
Gallery Hours: Fridays - Sundays, 12pm-6pm
Artist Talk with Lina Maria Giraldo (live in the gallery): Friday December 16, 4pm-6pm

Boston Cyberarts is excited to announce Data Para Todes, a data literacy project and exhibition lead by artist Lina Maria Giraldo on view in the gallery from Friday November 4 - Sunday December 18, 2022. Data Para Todes is a project created by Giraldo with the goal of working towards the improvement of Data Literacy among the Latine communities in Massachusetts. Through workshops held over the course of the summer and fall, Giraldo worked with first-generation Latine students to create individual working prototype sensors designed to collect air samples. In a collaboration with Bottom Line students George Acostalemus, Marvin Baez, & Jailene Guzman learned how to build Arduino-based electronics, including soldering and programming them. In the end, students built working sensors that collect, analyze and visualize air quality data. The cohort then learned how to clean the data and visualize it using industry standards tools such as Excel and tableau. This hand-on involvement in every stage allows students to understand the data’s values and its implications, and thereby to claim ownership. Ultimately the project is designed to enable students to utilize date to tell stories from their own perspectives. The exhibition at Cyberarts is the culmination of this process - together with Giraldo, students use the space of the gallery to realize their own data stories.

For additional information, please visit the project website: http://dataparatodes.com/

This project is funded in part by grants from the Berkshire Taconic Foundation, the Babson Foundation and Emerson College.

featured artists

Lina Maria Giraldo, Lead Artist, and Designer 
George Acostalemus, Student
Marvin Baez, Student
Jailene Guzman, Student

ABOUT LINA MARIA GIRALDO

Lina Maria Giraldo is a Colombian-born, Boston-based designer, interactive media artist, and storyteller with a Co-design, Civic Media, Art, and Technology background. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Data Visualization at the Journalism Department at Emerson College. Her work focuses on interactive storytelling for social change through immersive tools and research. With a diverse body of work, ranging from digital educational tools, data visualization, grassroots storytelling, public installations, and screen-based computer-generated work, Lina’s work explores questions related to identity, including a focus on Latino and Haitian experiences in the US; the environmental impact of consumption including projects focusing on e-waste; and the extinction of birds, all through the power of collective storytelling. Over the last 15 years, her work has focused on creating messages where she portrays our environment's fragility, community, equality, and immigration concerns. She likes to think of her work as a visual tool with an educational and civic purpose.