Announcing the event (poster not designed by me)
Creative Brief
Crafted Product
Water Words was a grant-finded event funded to the Sojourner Truth Library at SUNY New Paltz. This event integrated poetry writing on typewriters, a poetry reading, art projections, and a zine.
Water Words Zine1702.7KB
Goal
- Explore water from diverse perspectives, co-creating with students and faculty.
Role
My roles: Event Design, Graphic Design
- Sojourner Truth Library: Madeline Veitch
- Creativity Caravan: Poetry writing event
- Artwork for projections: SUNY New Paltz graduate students in the MFA program
Process
Discovery
Observations
Based on my Water Beacon project, I became interested in not only the science of water visualization, but also how poets and artists have corresponded with water.
Madeline, a Librarian at Sojourner Truth Library, and Jeni Mokren, the Dean of the School of Fine & Performing Arts, played key roles in alerting to me that there was funding for this type of event.
I did include some quick data visualizations into the event: a map showing all the rivers and tributaries in the United States. I also made some data visualizations for the poetry zine, which function more like abstract patterns than reasoning tools.
The initial sketches were poems typed on small cards, by students. Creativity Caravan led this process. All of the future work was founded on those poems.
Concepts → Blueprint
Reflection
This creative, experimental project—which combined poetry with some scientific views of water—inspired my interest in poet-scientists past. I began to research the scientific work of Goethe after this project, and this led me to research how his practice could serve as an inspirational model for people working with data today.