For my final project, I’m creating a series of 12 postcards generated by a neural net trained on a year of messages I’ve sent to my partner. Each postcard is trained on progressively more data (i.e., the first card is representative of Nov. 2020 only, the second card is representative of Nov. & Dec. 2020, and so on).
Additionally, (though I’m still workshopping this portion) the front of the cards are living rooms generated from the Google quick draw dataset. As the series progresses, the rooms also become progressively lived-in and elaborate.
Some of my inspirations were Nick Bantock’s Griffin & Sabine series, which is told in epistolary form:
I enjoyed these books immensely as a kid; there was something thrilling about the voyeuristic quality of opening someone else’s mail, amplified by the lush illustrations & calligraphy. I wanted to emulate the intimacy of the narrative.
I also enjoyed various creative datavis projects, including Dear Data by Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec. The ways they bridged data, storytelling, and beauty/visual interest were very compelling to me.
All 12 postcards in .svg form are below the cut:
plus the two fronts I’ve generated:
