Tag: Art and Media

What if the problem isn’t a lack of data, but a lack of infrastructure to share and reuse it responsibly over time?

When working with data, we often treat collection as the end of the story—focusing on efficient ways to acquire and store it—while neglecting the data’s longer life: making it findable, interpretable, re-usable, and actionable beyond its original purpose. Responsible reuse depends not just on technical infrastructure but also on shared practice.

With the Culture Data Commons as a starting point, join us in conversation with Stefaan Verhulst, co-founder of the GovLab and The Data Tank, on responsible data reuse and the opportunities of data stewardship through collective practices and participatory governance.

Organized by the Culture & Arts Policy Institute and hosted by BRIC, this session, part of Open Data Week 2026,  invites cultural leaders, researchers, technologists, policymakers, and funders to rethink data governance in the arts and to consider how collective data infrastructure can transform information into shared power.

RSVP here

ABOUT THE CULTURE DATA COMMONS
Developed by the Culture & Arts Policy Institute, the Culture Data Commons (The Commons) is a collectively stewarded shared data space for the culture and arts sector. It brings together datasets, tools, and governance practices to enable organizations to share, access, and reuse information responsibly. More than a portal, it is a collaborative framework that centers participation, transparency, and collective decision-making in how culture data is stewarded and applied.

Join artist Astrid Malter at BRIC for an introductory embroidery workshop and create your own meaningful map using NYC’s Open Data. In the first half of this workshop, Astrid will give a presentation on her methods and the data behind her hand-stitched map of Brooklyn that compares the location of MTA bus stop shelters to the Heat Vulnerability Index. The second half of the workshop will give participants time to learn basic embroidery techniques and explore making art with a public dataset of their choosing.

This event is open to beginners and all embroidery materials will be provided. If possible, participants should bring a phone, tablet, or computer to access public datasets.

Keeping It Urban Summit: AI, Robotics, Design @ Cornell NYC

Keeping It Urban is a one-day summit, kicking off NYC Open Data Week on Friday, March 20th at Cornell Tech. It’s an ode to the diversity and abundance of technology and culture born only from the density of NYC.

This event was born from frustration with the top-down silos we kept seeing: urban tech talks that center on infrastructure and zoning, and AI conversations entirely removed from the people and becoming doomsday narratives. None of it actually acknowledges the creative artists, open-sourced solutions, or the human flourishing that drives the true economic engine of NYC!

So, we’ve curated a full day of 3 stacked panels, 4+ artist showcases, and 5+ startup pitches featuring Streetlife Ventures, Spotify, MIT Media Lab, New York City Council, Sidewalk Labs (Part of Google), Everywhere Ventures, Fauna Robotics, Backslash Artists, and more.

Celebrating the playful, inventive tech being built right now and right here at Cornell Tech & New York City!

Tickets on Luma. More info keepingiturban.com. 

This event will be held at the Tata Innovation Center, Studio 141, 11 E Loop Rd, New York, NY 10044.

Weave New York's Data taught by Sarah Kay Miller

Taking data out of the digital in and into the physical, in this workshop attendees will learn how to turn data into a tapestry through weaving. Taught by Sarah Kay Miller, a data visualization designer and artist with a background in knitting, quilting, and weaving, datasets will transform from numbers into colorful and textural works of art. Participants will learn the basics of weaving, and how to creatively interpret a dataset into art to create a data physicalization. All materials will be provided.

Led by the Culture & Arts Policy Institute, this webinar introduces the core concepts, practices, and public benefits of open data through the lens of the culture and arts sector. It explains what “open data” actually means, how it differs from internal or private data, and why it matters for organizations seeking to understand their impact, advocate for resources, or strengthen transparency. Participants will learn about basic standards, common tools, and examples of how open data is used in the United States and internationally to inform policy and support cultural ecosystems.

The goal is to give participants the confidence and foundational knowledge needed to engage meaningfully in open data practices and to understand the value of joining broader open-data efforts such as the Institute’s Cultural Data Commons, a community-governed open data infrastructure designed to make cultural-sector information accessible, ethical, and equity-centered for artists, cultural workers, organizations, and public agencies. RSVP here

echo{logies} March 21-April 5, 2006 BRIC House Gallery datathroughdesign.com

Echo{logies} is the 2026 exhibition of Data Through Design, an independent collective who organize an annual art exhibition featuring works that creatively analyze, interpret, and interrogate data made available on NYC Open Data.

Visiting the Exhibition

The exhibition is open to the public daily from 12pm to 7 pm during Open Data Week. On March 21, we will host an opening event that requires RSVP.

When: March 21 – April 5, 2026, 12:00pm – 7:00pm

Where: BRIC, 647 Fulton Street (at Rockwell Place), Brooklyn, NY 11217

Opening Event: Saturday, March 21, 6:30 – 8:30 PM; RSVP.

About Echo{logies}

The projects in Echo{logies} work with the bodies of knowledge, or “-logies”, that reverberate through New York City’s data. They explore ecosystems and cycles of life expressed in data; the rhythms of growth, decay, renewal, and transformation as they “echo” through data, and the interplay between human and non-human worlds.

This year’s theme engages with questions such as: How can the city, and data itself, be understood as ecological and cyclical? How might data be materialized, embodied, or inscribed by natural processes? What accumulates, erodes, regenerates, lingers as traces, or resonates as echoes?

The work in this exhibition makes data felt, witnessed, or transformed—through physicalization, interaction, or by exposing how nature itself records and inscribes change. The artworks engage with living systems, natural or urban ecologies, or information ecosystems, and examine materiality and craft, murmurations and flows, entropy and genesis, and the sublime scale of ecological change.

  • Desire Paths: Becca Ellsworth & Becca Odell
  • HartLine: Ian Callender & Karla Rothstein
  • Landscape Workshop: Mark Heller & Mariel Collard Arias
  • Linger Loiter: Charlotte Gartenberg & Ivan Himanen
  • Metropolitan Cuneiform: Jingrong Zhang
  • The Oracle of Gotham: Karissa Whiting & Elizabeth Costa
  • Turnstile Murmurations: Trpti Sanghvi
  • Urban Data Orchestra: Composing the Hidden Rhythms of the City: Elina Oikonomaki & Lukas Lesina Debiasi
  • Waste Rhythms: Living Records of NYC Communities: HaoChe Hung & Tianxing (Vincent) Zhu
  • Wild Lots: Craig Fahner & al haley

Echo{logies} is organized and curated by the 2026 Data Through Design team: Julia Bloom, Tereza Chanaki, Rachel Daniell, Jack Darcey, Sara Eichner, Justin Roberts, and Can Sucuoğlu.

echo{logies} March 21-April 5, 2006 BRIC House Gallery datathroughdesign.com

Join us for the opening reception for the 2026 Data Through Design (DxD) exhibition, Echo{logies}. Data Through Design is an independent collective who organize an annual art exhibition featuring works that creatively analyze, interpret, and interrogate data made available on NYC Open Data. RSVP here

About the Exhibition

The 2026 Echo{logies} exhibition, which runs through April 5, contains ten data-driven, interdisciplinary art projects presented in partnership with BRIC. The projects in DxD 2026 work with the bodies of knowledge, or “-logies”, that reverberate through New York City’s data. They explore ecosystems and cycles of life expressed in data; the rhythms of growth, decay, renewal, and transformation as they “echo” through data, and the interplay between human and non-human worlds. This year’s theme engages with questions such as: How can the city, and data itself, be understood as ecological and cyclical? How might data be materialized, embodied, or inscribed by natural processes? What accumulates, erodes, regenerates, lingers as traces, or resonates as echoes?

The work in this exhibition makes data felt, witnessed, or transformed—through physicalization, interaction, or by exposing how nature itself records and inscribes change. The art works engage with living systems, natural or urban ecologies, or information ecosystems, and examine materiality and craft, murmurations and flows, entropy and genesis, and the sublime scale of ecological change.

DxD 2026 Artists + Projects

Trpti Sanghvi, Turnstile Murmurations
HaoChe Hung + Tianxing (Vincent) Zhu, Waste Rhythms: Living Records of NYC Communities
Becca Ellsworth + Becca Odell, Desire Paths
Charlotte Gartenberg + Ivan Himanen, Linger Loiter
Karissa Whiting + Elizabeth Costa, The Oracle of Gotham
Craig Fahner + al haley, Wild Lots
Mark Heller + Mariel Collard Arias, Landscape Workshop
Jingrong Zhang, Metropolitan Cuneiform
Ian Callender + Karla Rothstein, HartLine
Elina Oikonomaki + Lukas Lesina Debiasi, Urban Data Orchestra: Composing the Hidden Rhythms of the City

Echo{logies} is organized and curated by the 2026 Data Through Design team: Julia Bloom, Tereza Chanaki, Rachel Daniell, Jack Darcey, Sara Eichner, Justin Roberts, and Can Sucuoğlu.

UnSchool of Data is BetaNYC’s open space unconference for networking, co-creating, and learning. It brings together city residents, technologists, civic leaders, students, advocates, policy nerds, government staff, elected officials, journalists, designers, and more to leverage open data to tackle some of the most pressing issues in NYC and beyond.

It’s a community driven day for turning open data into civic solutions.

UnSchool of Data has these underlying goals:

  1. Convene community members to share civic insights and ideas.
  2. Create processes/projects that people will use for further action.
  3. Foster formal and informal communities of practice and action.

Learn more about UnSchool of Data and how it works at www.schoolofdata.nyc/unschool.

Tracing the City features student work from The Cooper Union’s interdisciplinary course, Data Science for Social Good, that pairs engineering, art, and architecture students with New York City nonprofits to help address real-world challenges together. Through the course, Cooper Union students help these organizations explore open datasets drawn from NYC Open Data sources, communicate findings visually, and propose data-informed interventions. Projects often highlight disparities in health outcomes, environmental conditions, educational access, and justice-system involvement across different city neighborhoods. This year, students are collaborating with NYC-based nonprofits—including organizations such as Bee U, Civic Health Alliance, and Justicia Lab, and Housing Rights Initiative—to investigate how open data can support youth empowerment, community health, tenancy protections, and corporate wage theft.

For Open Data Week 2026, we are hosting a public exhibition and reception showcasing work from this year’s Data Visualization and Data Science for Social Good cohort, alongside selected projects from previous years. The exhibition will feature a range of student work installed in The Cooper Union Civic Projects Lab; ranging from interactive installations, posters, visual narrative studies, and digital prototypes— all built using NYC Open Data and nonprofit partner datasets. The event is designed to be highly participatory: student teams will be present throughout the space to walk attendees through their datasets, demonstrate interactive components, discuss methodologies, and engage in open conversation about their findings and design choices. Rather than a static gallery, the exhibition will function as an open studio environment where visitors can test interactives, review visual drafts, ask questions directly to student creators, and learn how open data is used to support real-world challenges faced by NYC communities. A brief opening talk will introduce the pedagogy of the course and the role of open data in civic problem-solving, but the emphasis will be on hands-on engagement and informal dialogue. The goal is to create an accessible and welcoming public space where open data comes alive through student-led exploration, community insight, and interactive design. Register here.

How would you describe your favorite tree to someone who had never seen it?

Framed around themes of data feminism and critical data studies, this workshop, led by Alissa Kushner and Star Ajasin, explores the choices behind how traditional datasets and metadata describe the world around us. Participants will poke through NYC Open Data’s most recent Street Tree Census, interrogating what it means to capture the essence of our urban environments into a dataset, questioning the choices, politics, and perspectives behind how data is chosen, organized, and labeled. We will then visit a tree closest to the site of the workshop and collect metadata not typically captured about it through the creation of cyanotype images (also known as sun prints), serving as a counter-method of slow and embodied data capture. Participants will leave the workshop with a more critical understanding of environmental data as well as a handmade cyanotype to take home with them.

This event is hosted at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering at 370 Jay Street in Downtown Brooklyn.