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Borders and Boundaries

Data physicalization

As climate change has become more urgent and its impact more obvious, I’ve wondered how human-made borders could be influenced by ecological boundaries that occur within nature. 

The "Borders vs Boundaries" artifact is a prototype to explore how and if ecological boundaries and First Nations tribal border interact and if there are overlaps that might speak to how humans have moved in response to their climate (climate migration) in the recent past.

TLDR.

Collaborator

Zach Pino

Design question

Could our reasons for creating political, social or cultural borders overlap with environmental reasons for separating species of plants, animals, insects through climate? 

Tools

Python

Rhino

Hardware coding tools

Hypothesis

Areas with shared climate conditions are going to spawn similar rituals, cultures, foods, animal husbandry. Ecoregions are thus natural stoppage points for human expansion

Process

  1. Secondary Research

  2. Concept Ideation

  3. Development of height fields of relevant topography in Python

  4. 3D modeling of the height field

  5. CNC milling of the model

  6. Coding of LED sequences in Python

  7. Hardware coding

  8. Mapping of Indigenous tribe data to LED sequences and topography.

Outcome

3D sculpture of a map of the Illinois-Great Lakes area, overlayed on an LED sequence of regions inhabited by First Nations Peoples. 

Sculpture and led sequence.

The topographic terrain of the acrylic sculpture is a 3D representation of eco-region data. The elevations on the sculpture are based on geographical data showing varying levels in accordance with different eco-regions. 

 

The LED display represents regions that were inhabited by First Nations people. Each color represents a different First Nations Tribe.

Process.

Reflections + next steps.

As an initial prototype to practice data physicalization skills and explore my thoughts around the relationship between humans and nature, this project was successful.

 

As a tool for testing the hypothesis however, the sculpture's material (acrylic) is insufficient to accommodate the topographic relief needed to clearly define ecoregions and is not appropriate to represent the dynamism of the data sets represented (human movement and ecological boundaries).

 

A better tool might be a projection mapping asset, to be explored in the next iteration.

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