Data & Material Traces
Categories
Research Through Design
Team
Studio Tilt (Audrey Desjardins)
Project
Context in Data & Material Traces
Timeline
3 months
Year
2024
Data & Material Traces was a research project I completed as a research assistant at Studio Tilt under Audrey Desjardins. The question driving my work: how does the presence or absence of context change what a trace means — and to whom?
Data & Material Traces was a research project I completed as a research assistant at Studio Tilt under Audrey Desjardins. The question driving my work: how does the presence or absence of context change what a trace means — and to whom?
I made three series. Earring imprints — cast in cornstarch, flour, and water, labeled only with words describing how I remember each day. Bodily imprints on organic forms, deliberately unlabeled, so the shape itself becomes the only information available. And a record of my birth control and menstrual cycle — the tabs pulled from the case, the dots marking days, nothing else explained.
I made three series. Earring imprints — cast in cornstarch, flour, and water, labeled only with words describing how I remember each day. Bodily imprints on organic forms, deliberately unlabeled, so the shape itself becomes the only information available. And a record of my birth control and menstrual cycle — the tabs pulled from the case, the dots marking days, nothing else explained.
Each series strips away a different layer of context. The earrings give you the object and a word. The bodily imprints give you a shape. The birth control gives you a date range and marks. In each case you have just enough to form an assumption — and not enough to know if it's right.
The work sits at the intersection of personal data, embodied knowledge, and interpretation. Developed as part of a larger research inquiry into how material traces carry and withhold meaning, it asks a question I find myself returning to in interaction design: when you design what someone sees, you are also designing what they don't.
Each series strips away a different layer of context. The earrings give you the object and a word. The bodily imprints give you a shape. The birth control gives you a date range and marks. In each case you have just enough to form an assumption — and not enough to know if it's right.
The work sits at the intersection of personal data, embodied knowledge, and interpretation. Developed as part of a larger research inquiry into how material traces carry and withhold meaning, it asks a question I find myself returning to in interaction design: when you design what someone sees, you are also designing what they don't.
