The Disaster and Climate Change Artathon: Staging Art/Science Collaborations in Crisis Informatics

DOI

Information systems increasingly shape our knowledge of crises such as disasters and climate change. While these tools improve our capacity to understand, prepare for, and mitigate such challenges, critical questions are being raised about how their design shapes public imagination of these problems and delimits potential solutions. Prior work in human-computer interaction (HCI) has pointed to art/science collaboration as one approach for helping to explore such questions. As an attempt to draw on this potential, our team designed and facilitated a 2-day “artathon” that brought together artists and scientists to create new works of art based on disaster and climate data. Reflecting on the artathon and its outcomes, we contribute two sets of findings. First, we articulate opportunities, suggested by the artwork, for expanding research and design in crisis informatics. Second, we offer suggestions for HCI researchers seeking to stage successful art/science collaborations or similar inter-disciplinary events.