Data Through Design 2025

In March 2025, DxD presented our eight exhibition at BRIC featuring 10 works under the theme Corpus: Bodies of Data.

You can also access an online version of the 2025 exhibition wall labels, which include a description of the work and the open datasets utilized, and audio recordings by each artist describing their works.

**Theme: “Corpus: Bodies of Data”**

”Corpus” carries multiple meanings. A corpus might be a body of work, knowledge, literature, or language – the embodiment of activity, values, or beliefs. Corpus can also mean a physical body, an aggregation of organisms, a group of elements or people, or the corporeal substance of a thing.
This year, we ask artists to think about the concept of a corpus, or body of data, that can be physical or ephemeral. We imagine a dataset as a body of knowledge that indexes people in a community, events in a timeline, or observations in an area. But datasets are also representations of *our* bodies and the corpora of living things; collections of individuals, bodies of water, natural and human-made systems, the collectivity of the city.

2025 Projects & Artists

Final Inch: Mustard, Data, Sauerkraut

Simon and Elias ask what would it look like if the six bridges and tunnels which carry a majority of food into NYC constitute the city’s mouths then street vendors are its capillaries, delivering nutrients those final few inches into our own bodies? Taking the shape of an interactive hot dog stand, Final Inch appropriates a familiar form to re-imagine food infrastructure. Trading foil wrappers for systems maps and ketchup packets for herb gardens enables new narratives around networks that feed the city.

Elias Bennett, Simon Lesina-Debiasi

Click HERE to listen to Elias and Simon talk more about their piece.

The Timelines Project

Timelines examines how time-based experiences shape cultural advocacy. Through collaborative workshops, participants map historical moments that influenced their work. The resulting data is reused to create art installations and interactive content, revealing interwoven narratives. The project challenges data neutrality, emphasizing its participatory nature. Its first physical installation at BRIC features timelines generated by members of New Yorkers for Culture and Arts, the Latinx Arts Consortium, and the Shinnecock Nation, highlighting civic engagement’s role in public policy.

Mauricio Delfin

Click HERE to listen to Mauricio talk more about his piece.

Breath Atlas

“Breath Atlas” explores New Yorkers’ experience of breathing in their neighborhoods. Ten ceramic amphoras represent neighborhoods in New York City where constraints on breath have been particularly acute. Their differing textures, glazes and distortions represent data about air pollution, asthma, poverty levels, incarceration rates, and the availability of open and green spaces.

HK Dunston, Jill Sigman, Abigail Regner & Mariya Chekmarova

Click HERE to listen to HK, Jill, Abigail and Mariya talk more about their piece.

Aging Out of Place: Chinatown Elderly

Inspired by mahjong— a game of social connection in Chinese culture but also a symbol of the growing gambling addiction due to social isolation in Chinatown— this piece recreates a portrait of NYC Chinatown using laser-etched mahjong tiles of landmarks and elderly residents. This piece centers the struggles of elderly in New York City's Chinatown to age in place, focusing on themes of immigration, isolation, and challenges of aging in a city amid gentrification and poverty. Elderly communities, especially those in ethnic enclaves, are often “aged out” of data narratives due to digital and language divides.

Michelle Hui

Click HERE to listen to Michelle talk more about her piece.

Body of Waste

"Body of Waste" is a sculptural installation that invites viewers to witness the autopsy of New York City’s residential waste ecosystem, resurrecting the tangible body behind the data from DSNY’s waste categorization study. Using this dataset, they create a living organism out of liquified silicone and upcycled materials, indexing the collective habits, necessities, and excesses of the city. The recycling and refuse streams serve as its circulation, while the waste categories form components that cluster into organs and flow like cells through its bloodstream.

Alison Long, Cass Yao & Keyarow Mosley

Click HERE to listen to Alison, Cass and Keyarow talk more about their piece.

Hyperphagia

“Hyperphagia” reimagines NYC as a living organism, with each borough acting as a “cell” in an urban metabolism. Using Port Authority cargo and DSNY waste datasets, the interactive sculpture visualizes the city’s cycles of consumption and waste through generative simulations displayed on upcycled CRT monitors. Viewers explore NYC’s systemic inequities and environmental dependencies by engaging with the organism’s metabolic “digestive tract,” prompting reflection on the complex interconnections shaping the city’s health and sustainability.

Matías Piña & Arden Schager

Click HERE to listen to Matías and Arden talk more about their piece.

The Entirety of NYC Land

NYC’s map typically shows the five boroughs, but nearly half of its government-controlled land lies upstate, centered around its reservoirs. This vital infrastructure sustains both city and upstate communities, requiring a symbiotic relationship long neglected but improving in recent decades. This is an ongoing debate with land still being acquired by NYC today. Understanding these waters, their surrounding lands, and dependent populations is crucial for future environmental, political, and social success.

Natch Quinn

Click HERE to listen to Natch talk more about his piece.

Tapestreet: The Fabric of NYC

“Tapestreet” is a musically and digitally woven tapestry collection representing New York City’s fabric. Each piece tells the story of a street or neighborhood, transforming them into aural and textural forms through weaving, computation, text, and music theory. Viewers are invited to contribute their narratives, weaving their own NYC stories into the collection. This interactive experience allows participants to engage with the city’s history and take a piece of its cultural tapestry home.

Nishra Ranpura

Click HERE to listen to Nishra talk more about her piece.

Tower of Babel: Bodies of Language in Lexicon

"Tower of Babel" explores NYC’s linguistic diversity by imagining neighborhood-specific creoles—languages shaped by local cultural convergence. Through an interactive map installation, users will be able to hear a unique creole, generated by a language model weighted by NYC’s linguistic demographics. This audiovisual experience highlights the evolution of language influenced by native speakers and particulars of a locality. By presenting a fragmented language and subsequent comprehension, we showcase how language unites diverse communities through shared expression and history.

Aida Razavilar & Paul Hanna

Click HERE to listen to Aida and Paul talk more about their piece.

Marsh Temporalities

"Marsh Temporalities" explores questions around the limits and expansions of the corporeal form through a consideration of the microscopic ecosystems with which we coexist. This project rethinks the human entity through an audiovisual installation that combines microscopy-based visuals with a soundscape of biorhythmic recordings taken from salt marsh locations throughout NYC. Salt marshes are among the most biologically productive ecosystems on the planet, and many are unaware that these rich environmental spaces exist in and around their neighborhoods.

Jessica Reisch

Click HERE to listen to Jessica talk more about her piece.