President Times
Description
The assignment is to use an external vpn to extract data and visulize the dataset in a way following the data feminism principles. In this project, I've met a lot of problems with apis I found as well as working with them, I decided to document every step and issues I've encountered here for future references.
Design Process
My first idea was to get acess to the Foursquare API for their location data of all the art installations in the NYC area. I have the idea of re-classify the installations into different types based on their "potential functions." For example, most art installations especial status are being built only for viewing, but their structure might support other functions. People in today's world have made so much contributin into exploring the other functions of the installations which I think has a strong sense of humor:
Other functions could be explored too. My idea is basically to make a installation search engine for special use for people to play with. But I figured that the Foursquare free api is not all for free, they have limitations for free users and for more detailed api information developers have to pay be become premieum members so I have to gave up on the idea.
Then it comes to my second idea, which is to get access to the natural disaster data. I choose the flood api for which have the information about the location and level of floods. I want to build something to check the most vulnerable under the effect of floods and the harmful level. The idea is from a creative competition I participated at Tsinghua University. (project link:
The idea of floodsrecognising is one of the beginning step of achieving or desiged plan. But searching for floods apis are not so easy. Most of them have to be paid or are private. I finally found one which is free and even have an instruction of how to use it, but when I got into the official page to get the api key, the website had no access for that. I talked to some experienced students and they told me that a lot of apis have this issuer, so I have to give up again.
Due to the lack of time, I have to scale down my plan so I just quickly access to the NYT api. Since I have a lot of work related to Trump, I thought why not just keep going. So I made a simple collection of all the news about both of the president, Trump and Biden that had reported by NYTs. I chosed the article search api and simply build 2 sections for each of them.
When I first started to think about the design, this interactive form reminded me of Bian Lian in Peking Opera. Bian Lian, which could be translated as face-changing is a special skill used in the art of Sichuan opera to shape characters. It is a romantic technique to reveal the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters in the play. Sichuan opera puts Bian Lian on the stage and to make it a unique art.
Instead of making the actual face masks used in the opera, I decided to build something cuter, and I thought about Pokemon faces. They are perfect for the interactive here.
Reflection
Working with apis, or in this case here, external datasets is a pretty important skill. There ate so many databases collected by many other institutions and organizations and ready for us to use directly. With the skills, designers can do a lot of things with exist dataset to make it the way we want to show to people, or specify the function for a special use.
Although my tryouts for the first two ideas aren't satisfying, the experiences gave me the basic idea of API and how might they work. I have some ideas about what I wanna make with the external apis, but I do not have enough skills and coding knowledge to achive. I would like to spend my winter break time to have a thorough and systemetic study of javascript and critical computation fundations to improve my skill.
One of the most important thing I got from the data feminist readings, as while as all other readings from the class are the concept of examining and challenging data. This ability is crucial for creativity. I got so many more inspirations and ideas from the class materials I would like to try in the next step. With the coding ability I got, I would like to make some little demos while I study more about coding.
Reference
NYT API: https://developer.nytimes.com
p5.js API tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMne3LY4bks&t=570s
News Icon: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=http%3A%2F%2Fgrin2b.com%2Fnews%2Fgrin2b_icon_news%2F&psig =AOvVaw112oS7EpTzo9imR6VNcNrB&ust=1608286851969000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCPCY 4cbl1O0CFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD
Trump Figure Icon: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.visualpharm.com%2Ffree-icons%2Fdonald%25 20trump-595b40b65ba036ed117d3f7b&psig=AOvVaw3fUwiB-6qlJWwC-yrOl1wh&ust=1608286902864000&source =images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCKiLzN_l1O0CFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD
Biden Figure Icon: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Ficons8.com%2Ficon%2FJ9O86KQ88THI%2Fjoe-biden& psig=AOvVaw22TVpRavajOnj_l7JN8csX&ust=1608286938677000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCP jX2-_l1O0CFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD