[This episode of Data Stories is sponsored by Tableau. You can download a free trial at http://tableau.com/datastories – check the new Tableau 9!]

Hi folks! We have Benedikt Groß with us on the show. Benedikt defines himself as a “speculative and computational designer who works antidisciplinarily.” Benedikt graduated from the Design Interactions course at the Royal College of Art and he works for his studio in Stuttgart, Germany. He is the co-author of ‘Generative Design,’ one of the standard books on the topic.

In the show we talk about some of his amazing data projects at the intersection of art, design, science, sociology, etc. Aerial Bold, for instance, is a project about searching satellite images to find buildings and geographic features that look like letters. The Big Atlas of LA Pools, is a project about mapping all pools in LA. And Population.io is about showing demographic data in an engaging way and even giving you a prediction of when you are going to die! This is an amazing episode with stories about how Bill Gates crushed Population.io with one tweet, how they published 74 books of pool images totaling about 6000 pages, and how they outsourced some of the work to an Indian company to trace the pools. Amazing stuff!

Enjoy it!

LINKS

Generative Design – Benedikt’s book on generative design
RCA Design Interactions
The Big Atlas of LA Pools
Aerial Bold Kickstarter Page
Letter Hunt for Aerial Bold – help Benedikt and his team find letters!
Population.io
Foldit – Science Gamification Tool

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