Making Data Visible: A “Collaboration of Change” Project

Eighth-graders participated in a community service project at Crescent Beach State Park during the first semester. Students collected more than 1,100 pieces of trash and cataloged their findings in Maine’s state scientific report about ocean pollution. In their Visual Arts classes, students folded origami paper cranes to visually represent the total number of collected pieces. The origins of this “Making Data Visible” assignment are found in a visual art movement where artists use data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to produce aesthetic and visual representations of big data.