200 years of risk perceptions: Data science visualised in batik art

Narratives provide an insight into people’s perception or views regarding an issue. A data team led by IPUR’s Lead Scientist for Data & Technology Asst Prof Reuben Ng curated and analysed a corpus of digitised newspapers, magazines, fiction, and non-fiction published since the 1810s to identify terms which have co-occured with the word “risk”. The findings, visualised through a batik art sculpture, reveals the changing understanding of risk across two centuries.

IPUR funded the production of “RiskTalk” – a Data Sculpture utilising Batik Art to visualise 200 years of Risk Perceptions. Dr Pablo Suarez, Artist-in-Residence at IPUR came up with the concept and design of the structure, and Asst Prof Ng provided the architecture and analytics.The batik data sculpture invites participants to immerse themselves in the coloured embodiments of immerse data, to examine and reflect on our changing understanding of risk.