Artist guides flock through birding, data analysis

For the average nature lover, math might not factor into the equation. But for Jer Thorp, a data artist and professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, the fields of mathematics and ornithology — the study of birds — could not be more connected. “We like to think of the natural world as something sacred and pre-natural that we can appreciate without thinking very hard about,” Thorp said. “Through data collection, we find the external players that are changing the world we care so much about. It’s one thing to say a species is dying; it’s another to ask why.” Data artists create abstract visual representations of data to evoke an aesthetic experience with collected information. Thorp led three Lafayette College students and three faculty members through a data art project, in which participants represented yearly visitation habits for birds at Merrill Creek Reservoir outside Phillipsburg through a postcard that they then emailed to family and friends.

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