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Artist Rachel Binx is a data visualizer, developer, and designer who works in Netflix in Los Angeles, and she had previous work experiences in Mapzen, NASA, as well as Stamen Design. As an only child from Mexico, her childhood dream was to become a world traveler, which is her source of inspiration for her works. Throughout the years she has co-founded Meshu, Gifpop, and monochōme: all small companies that explore creating one-off physical objects from the data that customers find meaningful. Meshu, a jewelry company that is based on geographic data of customers, was co-founded with Sha Hwang, another Stamen alumni. Gifpop is a kickstarted project that creates service prints from uploaded gif files. She also founded monochōme, a clothing company that allows customers to use maps to create a custom print on various clothing.
Her intent for these projects and startups was to connect people’s experiences (countries they visited, or even streets they walk every day) as data points and visualize them, creating a sense of summarizing one’s life and adding personal touches to each design.
She is also interested in data journaling, where she would program her laptop to take photos whenever she is in a new environment. She collects data from automated data or memory, and store those that are important and personal to people, then turn them into something visual and physical.
Binx talks about her projects by introducing her stories and personal experiences, which makes the project intent and outcome easier to follow. It is also more relatable for the audiences, and the idea of “customizing” and collecting personal data seems intriguing to most people since it adds a special touch to the project. I admire her creativity and her ability of turning data points into something artistic and acceptable by the general public, but I also admire her will to hold on to her childhood dream and focusing on things she truly loves. (Although the products are quite pricy: I’ve checked her websites)