The John Ruskin Birthday Lecture with Mona Chalabi: Not Numb Numbers
Data can often feel cold, callous or just plain pathetic when we’re trying to understand our current crises. How can statistics capture the enormity let alone the obscenity of what is happening in Gaza, Sudan and Congo? In this talk, I’ll explore the ways that combining the humanities and the arts can get us closer to reality rather than farther from it. But this lecture is really a discussion - I’ll question myself throughout about whether my approach really does add value to the information we’re consuming and I hope members of the audience will continue that back and forth in the conversation afterward.
Mona Chalabi, who uses data as the foundation for her work, is an Emmy nominee whose art has been exhibited at the Smithsonian Design Museum, the Tate, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Design Museum. She is the executive producer and creative director of the animated show #1 Happy Family USA with Ramy Youssef, A24, and Amazon Studios, and her work can also be found at The New Yorker, The Guardian, Netflix, NPR, the BBC, and National Geographic.
Free but ticketed event.
Originally published at reilly.nd.edu.