#NYCML16 Preview: Data Science
Data science is one of the key technology areas reshaping the way media is produced, distributed, and consumed and the way stories are told. NYC Media Lab’s Summit, #NYCML16, taking place on September 22nd, 2016 at Columbia University’s Alfred Lerner Hall, will host several discussions, workshops and demonstrations of new technologies, projects and startups related to data, data visualization and creative uses of data in storytelling. What follows is a preview of many of these elements.
Hearst Director of Data Science Rahel Jhirad explores deep learning applications for images with NYU’s Kyunghyun Cho
In a current project, Hearst is working with New York University to understand and model the linkages between the text of articles and the images contained in the articles. To preview their workshop, Rahel Jhirad and Kyunghyun Cho, Assistant Professor of Data Science at NYU, will provide an overview of the progress they have made in using techniques in deep learning and machine learning to experiment with building a recommendation and image retrieval engine that will automatically suggest images given new text content.
10am, Mainstage Auditorium at Alfred Lerner Hall
CUNY’s Lev Manovich teaches a workshop on big data, visualization, and social media inequality
CUNY Grad Center Professor Lev Manovich will present a step-by-step guide to his recent data visualization project Inequaligram, which analyzed over 7.5 million public Instagram images shared in Manhattan.
Inequaligram used an analysis of social media activity to create what Manovich and co-researcher Agustin Indaco are calling “social media inequality.” Determined by the volume of social media activity in each surveyed neighborhood, they have found that specific locations are more or less prone to reflect existing economic inequalities. Tips for applying Data Viz practices to social media will also be uncovered.
2–3pm, Alfred Lerner Hall
Live performance “Emanations” turns the human body into an interface for data visualization
Emanations is a series of spatialized sound experiments using physical gestures and movement developed by Katherine Louise Boehm and Udit Mahajan, recent graduates of the Parsons Design & Technology MFA program. An individual’s response to sound data works to turn the human body into an interface for visualization, allowing for a new analysis and understanding of music cognition.
This experiment with audio data is a poetic experience; it offers performers a mix of abstraction and narrative freedom and in turn creates an unguided, improvised and unique experience for the audience.
1pm, Alfred Lerner Hall
Machine learning startup Vidrovr provides video solutions for media corporations
Video dominates online traffic and multimedia has become standard in content creation and consumption. Not only is web traffic dominated by video, but online and mobile video advertising is the most rapidly growing and profitable advertising real estate available to media corporations and advertisers, and will only continue to grow into the future. Media companies need systems that can index, search, and recommend video content in a cost-effective, automatic, and accurate manner.
Launched by a team of PhD students from the Digital Video and Multimedia Lab at Columbia University, NYC Media Lab Combine startup Vidrovr enables companies to better leverage and monetize their video content through automatic video indexing and content recommendation.
11:30am, Mainstage Auditorium at Alfred Lerner Hall
Monuments to Change uses weather data to predict the effects global warming has on public art
Monuments to Change is a projection mapping installation developed by Parsons MFADT graduate Seung Hyung Lee that shows progressive environmental degradation through visualizing the future of cultural heritage monuments. Now more than ever, cultural properties are in danger of destruction due to atmospheric pollution. Acid rain and other air pollutants degrade cultural properties at a rate up to several hundred times the speed of natural deterioration. Thus, cultural heritage artifacts can also serve as climate change observatories that shows long term effects of environmental degradation.
Based on the current state of the artifact, material measurements and environmental data, the project shows past, present and future states of the World Heritage Site. The future is described based on climate science projections and current rates of deterioration. The goal is to raise awareness for the serious effects of global warming.
12pm-3pm, Demo Expo at Alfred Lerner Hall
Joe Ward of the New York Times and Mark Hansen of Brown Institute for Media Innovation talk about data visulization in 2016 Olympic coverage
Mark Hansen, Director of the Brown Institute for Media Innovation and Professor of Statistics at Columbia University, will be in conversation with Joe Ward, Sports Graphics Editor for the New York Times. Ward, having oversaw the Times 2016 Olympic coverage in Rio de Janeiro, will speak with Hansen about beautiful examples of data visualization from the recent Games. The pair will touch on new modes of journalism and platforms for production, including VR, video overlay, and stop action.
For more information regarding the #NYCML16 program, contact:
Alexis Avedisian, Communications Manager, NYC Media Lab alexis@nycmedialab.org / @nycmedialab / @holyurl
