Adventures With Data

I think back to my childhood with fond memories. I grew up in a small town in North Wales but despite my slightly isolated upbringing, I never felt like an outsider. Other than the fact that I literally spent most of my time outside. Life felt full of possibilities, and I was encouraged to believe that I could achieve anything I put my mind to. The three things that preoccupied my mind more than anything were messing about outside, drawing and maths.

Back then, it was probably quite strange that I liked maths. Most children don’t. But as an adult, it seems more strange that I like maths and art. I didn’t realise it at the time, but as I was growing up, I appeared to cross some imaginary line where all the things I loved as a child were suddenly separated into two camps. Things I could carry on doing as an adult, and things I should stop.

I didn’t stop anything.

First up, messing about outside. It seemed people thought I should stop that. But I’d never let go of my bike since first feeling the freedom of flying down a hill without stabilisers. I was often the odd one out arriving at places by pedal power, viewed as slightly strange by those around me. But bikes meant messing about outside. And I liked that.

Then there was maths and art. This is where things got a little tricky. When I reached 16 and had to decide what to study (maths and art being the obvious choice), I was told it was impossible. These two subjects were deemed so incompatible that they were located at the opposite ends of town. My first thought was ‘no problem’. I had my bike. But apparently, physically separating these subjects wasn’t enough of a deterrent. To make sure it was actually impossible to study both these subjects, they were also timetabled at exactly the same time. Bike or not, it proved impossible. So I chose maths.

Navigating a so-called adult world was definitely more complicated than learning the intricacies of complex numbers. And so, in an attempt to try out this normal existence, I decided to chunk my life. After studying maths, I moved to Scotland, got a job in data and enrolled onto the evening classes at the art college to work my way through the degree modules by night. I was still carrying around my childhood notions that I could do anything, and believing anything is possible seemed to be a much nicer place to be.

After 5 years of evening classes, I applied to do a master’s in visual communications. Whilst still doing my full-time job. I also decided to do the master’s full-time. Weekends were gone but I was going to find a way to live life my way. What followed was an intense period of studying, working and personal loss. A close friend passed away following a period of mental illness and if ever there was a time to reevaluate your own life, this was it.

And so, it seems that life continues. I was determined to find some of that childhood joy that I was desperately missing, so I continued to work in data by day and started to freelance in design by night. The weekends were spent off the beaten track and reserved for cycling and messing about in the sea. 

As someone that loved maths, this seemed like a neat solution. Problem solved. Outwardly it appeared that I was doing everything I loved. Except in reality, by day I wanted to be doing design, by night I wanted to be in the sea and on the weekends my head was full of ideas of seemingly unrealistic things I could be doing with numbers. That was often the way. Ideas always appeared when soaking in the natural world.

And then the world briefly stopped. And this time it stopped for everyone. A global pandemic had arrived.

For some, time was cut short but for others, time slowed down. 

This diminishing of pace had the same effect as a day on the bike where the turning of pedals literally cranked out ideas. Normally, those ideas had somewhere to go. They got shared with friends and floated about amongst peers. They were ideas that I couldn’t quite realise on my own. I was short of skills and they would need collaboration in order to survive. Almost all of them didn’t make it.

Now, things were different. The friends and the peers were finding their own way to navigate through this period of time. And so this time, my ideas restricted to floating around the same four walls that I was. One idea in particular stood out. In amidst what felt like a gift of extra time, I had the space to think back to those three things that I loved. They were the same three things that I loved now but they were so distinct from each other that they’d become to mean something different. They’d become normal.

This new idea that had arrived involved maths and design and the natural world. It was simple. A neat solution. It involved unearthing data and numbers and formulas that already existed to describe the natural world. And I was going to take those data and numbers and formulas and turn them into visuals. But this was where the idea became vulnerable. How could I turn data into design? That wasn’t actually the problem. I knew how. Those numbers could be translated into design through code. In my mind, I had decided I could use code to instruct a computer to link those numbers and formulas to the colour and placement of marks on a page.   

That was the missing link. I couldn’t code. My idea was trapped. It would literally remain in my mind. Like all my other ideas, it needed a collaborator to survive. But the solitary nature of this period of time meant collaborators were on hold. In order to survive, my idea relied on me alone.

And so I learned to code.

What seemed to be a daunting task at first, quickly became enjoyable. There’s a real sense of wonderment when you discover something new for the first time. It’s like being a child again. I’d finally found that childhood joy in the most unlikely of places.
This act of learning literally opened up a whole new world. The hidden wonders of the natural world. I began to create designs from the very numbers that explained all kinds of intricacies in our natural world. Intricacies that I was discovering for the first time that were continually leaving me in awe and stoking my curiosity; from the patterns of tides and the direction of swell to the murmuration of starlings and the endangered habitats across our isles. 

I called this new world ploterre. 

Ploterre is the moniker I work under when creating designs using environmental data. I no longer have to chunk my day into working with data by day and design by night. Now my days seamless integrate all three things I love – nature, maths and art. It turns out sometimes you can do anything you set your mind to and that is definitely a reason to be cheerful.

Rebecca Kaye
https://www.ploterre.com

https://www.instagram.com/ploterre/

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