Arizona water physicalizaion
What is the human impact on water?
I wanted to express my interest in water conservation through this artistic data physicalization. I focused on my home state of Arizona since water conservation is critical to its desert ecosystem. This project allowed me to make a physical object that shows how humans have impacted Arizona’s water.
Special thanks to Zach Pino for his guidance and technical support on this project.
What is a data physicalization?
A data physicalization is a physical object whose form is derived from data. You can think of it like a data visualization that has three dimensions instead of two dimensions. Often data physicalizations express the data, but the data itself is not legible in a strict sense.
Digging into the earth for water
The acrylic form represents the number of ground water wells in each water basin in Arizona. The deeper the carving, the more wells there are in that area.
The deepest areas correlate with the most people in two cases (where the cities of Phoenix and Tucson are). In one other case, a deep carving is on the lands of the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona, bringing to light the dark legacy of settler colonialism on the land.
Prototyping flowing water
as light
I wanted to display surface water from major rivers as light. I coded a Raspbery Pi using Python to control an LED light strip to emulate the flowing water of perennial rivers throughout the state.
The rivers represented here are the Colorado, Gila, Santa Cruz, and San Pedro Rivers. In the final piece, blue light represents perennial rivers that still flow today, and yellow light represents perennial rivers that no longer flow.