Embodied Information: Local Trees, Datasets, and You

This workshop will explore tree data in The Woodlands, an historic garden and cemetery within walking distance of Penn's main campus. In this session, we will experience the small, subjective, and personal side of data: what Giorgia Lupi calls data humanism and Kelly Dobson calls data visceralization. We will visit the Woodlands for a short nature walk and gather our own small datasets based on our experience there. Collectively, we will consider what these small and subjective data experiments can show us, how they compare to other kinds of data collected about the Woodlands, and how small data and big data together can ultimately illuminate different experiential realities of a place or an ecosystem.