[Colloq] Hiring Talk - Yanni Alexander Loukissas - Drawing Data Work - March 19th, 11:45am, Ryder Hall - 102

[Jessica Biron]

DRAWING DATA WORK 

Yanni Alexander Loukissas 



Tuesday, March 19 th 

11:45 am – 1:00 pm 

Ryder Hall - 102 



Abstract : 



On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, astronauts on-board the Apollo 11 lunar module, narrowly completed the first moon landing in the wake of a series of disruptive alarms from their digital guidance computer. We now know that those program alarms were inconsequential. However, the burden of monitoring and interpreting those data distracted the team at critical moments, nearly forcing them to abort the mission or risk a fatal crash. This early event in the development of human-computer relationships foreshadowed widespread public concerns about the integration of digital computing into everyday work. 



Since Apollo, issues of distraction, authority, and trust have troubled digital interactions with data. Surgeons struggle with increasing demands on their attention; indeed, they must monitor data in proliferating digital forms while simultaneously executing complex manual tasks and managing an ad hoc team. Architects quarrel over what constitutes an adequate digital model and who has the skills, creative sensibilities, and access to data necessary to construct it. Curators of material collections including libraries, archives and museums fear a transformation or loss of knowledge through digitization. I seek to understand and aid such workers as they endeavor to merge, modify or replace older virtues and norms with the values of an emerging digital culture. 



This talk addresses the question of how to study work in the technological moment. Using the historical example of the Apollo 11 landing, I will demonstrate how I have used data visualization as a form of inquiry into the micro-physics of human-computer relationships. My presentation will address a number of issues, including how to integrate qualitative and quantitative sources, animate data through graphics, and allow for multiple interpretations to adhere. This research contributes to a timely and long-term ambition: to bring design methods to bear on the study of knowledge and identity, in contemporary life. 



Bio: 



Yanni Alexander Loukissas is both a designer and a scholar of digital media. His current work confronts entangled social and technical challenges in the creation and interpretation of digital artifacts. Recent projects include tools for critically examining digital collections, solutions for reviewing perioperative data in surgery, and a data visualization of the first lunar landing. He is the author of Co-Designers: Cultures of Computer Simulation in Architecture (Routledge, 2012), a book about shifting media practices in design and accompanying concerns about the redistribution of control and responsibility. Cutting across formats and disciplines, his work reveals how digital media are reshaping knowledge and identity, in contemporary life. 



Loukissas is a principal and senior researcher with metaLAB (at) Harvard, a project of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, where he leads explorations into possible futures for digital scholarship and teaching. He is also on the faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Originally trained as an architect at Cornell University, he subsequently pursued a Master of Science and a PhD in Design and Computation at MIT. He also completed postdoctoral work at the MIT Program in Science, Technology, and Society. For two years he served as a visiting lecturer at Cornell, where he co-founded Surface Cities, a research and teaching initiative established to study changing images of cities. He teaches hands-on studios and theory-based seminars on topics including media design, urban computing, and the anthropology of technology.