LO8: The Creative Practice of An Individual

A speaker at the Eyeo Festival that I found very inspiring is Nadieh Bremer. Bremer graduated with a degree in Astronomy from the University of Leiden in 2011. During her time there, she was introduced to the programming language IDL often used in Astronomy to analyze data. From her introduction to IDL, she realized that she wanted to be a data scientist; however, she wanted to analyze more tangible data rather than being in a niche field like astronomy, so she joined Deloitte. During her time there, she learned 6 different languages including R where she started doing simple data visualizations. In 2013, she joined a data science conference Strata where she was introduced to coding in d3 and found her love in data visualization design.

I admire her work greatly as they are able to present complexities and interconnections into beautiful and tangle visuals. One of my favorite work from Bremer is a data visualization she collaborated with UNESCO to show the interconnectedness between different cultures across the world. The map displays intangible cultural heritage–ranging from skills to practice to knowledge totaling about 500 cultural elements. Cultural elements are hard to quantify, yet Bremer was able to come up with an impressive map with statistics and interactive visual elements. The thoughtfulness that went into her work blew my mind. Her work also portrays a harmonious combination of mathematics and the arts, which makes it very intriguing and inspiring.

Link: https://www.visualcinnamon.com/portfolio/