Anna Eschenbacher

Die gute Nachricht is a weekly data visualization representing good news published by the German newspaper taz ↗.

Together with Johanna Hartmann ↗ and Francesca Morini ↗, we design each data visualization, which is printed on the cover of the zukunft section of wochentaz. The graphics display a wide range of good news such as climate protection and health improvements. We use a mix of photographic elements that convey the topic and a fitting visualization technique to map the data.

In collaboration with the newspaper taz , we designed and produced both physical and digital postcards containing visualizations covering various aspects of climate protection and mitigation in Germany. For each of the 401 districts and 16 states in Germany, the reader can explore climate protection postcards in the five sectors: energy, mobility, buildings, agriculture, and waste. The goal of our research is to study readers’ engagement with data visualizations on the topic of climate protection — across multiple media channels.

The published article can be found on taz.de/klimakarten ↗. Further information on the research at the UCLAB ↗. We presented the project at NIAM 2023 ↗, at UN:REALE ↗ in Potsdam and as a guest lecturers at University Bielefeld ↗. A research paper about the project was presented at IEEE VIS 2023 ↗ and published on IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics ↗.

This work was in collaboration with Francesca Morini ↗, Johanna Hartmann ↗, Marian Dörk ↗ and the taz journalists Luise Strothmann, Lalon Sander, Jean-Philipp Baeck, Jelene Malkowski

The real-time war rug is a tangible and audiovisual display of the ongoing socio-political conflicts through the medium of war rugs. We would like to use this soft reminder to draw attention to all conflicts happening around us and the interconnected nature of our eco-system. The physical realization of the project is a rug made by tufting technique that consists of two layers: a moving and a still one. The tufted rug depicts the world map, and behind it, there is a layer of motors that is linked to rotatable discs covered with “soft pixels”

Further details can be found on our project page ↗ and in the project video ✰↗. The project was funded by the medios sintientes lab ↗ at Medialab Matadero in Madrid.

Part of our wonderful team ↗ were: Fanni Szilvás, Rita Eperjesi, Pei-Chi Lee, Gabriella Paredes, Elian Stolarsky, Julieta Iacono, and Leslie Portillo Pérez. I primarily worked on the physical computing part together with Zainab Tariq.

On behalf of KLING KLANG KLONG ↗, a Berlin sound studio, Simon Stimberg ↗ and I conceptualized and developed an audiovisualization tool tailored for their music and sound environments. The sound brings the visual matter to life and thus transmits impulses for movement to the individual particles. Without sound, the particles are very inert and hardly active. As soon as the sound is playing different parameters influence their movement behavior. Constant analysis of the audio file creates permanent new visual patterns formed by a multitude of particles. Resulting visualizations ↗

The immersive documentary tells the story of a woman's experience with sexual harassment. It is about cases of everyday harassment that are often labeled as unpleasant but ultimately harmless incidents. These stories are narrated by her while the viewer is surrounded by her animated and shadowy memories through a VR headset. The memories were captured with LIDAR and volumetric video. The project is currently in its final steps and will be published soon.

I worked on the project as technical director together with Zainab Tariq and Vincent Abert.

The climate crisis is an anxiety-provoking topic for future generations. These visualizations explore the intersection between privilege and climate anxiety, showing how people from the Gloabal South are heavily affected by climate anxiety. The last slide compares the expenditure on heating and electricity per person in the EU countries vs. the global average.

The graphics were part of a data journalism workshop by Francesca Morini ↗ on how to bring data visualizations about inequality in the climate crisis to Instagram. I collaborated with Johanna Hartmann ↗ and Lutricia Valentine. They were later posted by taz ↗ on their social media account.

Remnants - Kind Acts of Cruelty was an installation and accompanying website about microaggressions. The visitors were surrounded by a swarm of letters constantly grouping into phrases and bursting into a swarm again. Our main metaphor about microaggressions is that they are like mosquito-bites, one is an inconvenient feeling, but it’s easy to get over it, but as they happen more and more often, and the quantity and the frequency increases, they become unbearable.

Further information about the topic is on our website kindactsofcruelty.com ↗. Here is the teaser film ↗ for our installation. The installation was exhibited at 48h Neukölln at KINDL and at Sehsüchte Festival. I talked about the project in the podcasts audioart ↗ and Dritte Klappe ↗.

The project was a collaboration with Rita Eperjesi, Jacky Lai, Zainab Tariq, Denise Bischof, and Ellina Nurmukhametova. With the support of Klara Otto, Júlia Koffler, Félix Römer, Florian Kempf, and Marie Scharnagl.

What is the first impression when you leave the house? [T]RÄUME DEINEN KIEZ FREI questions our definition of public space, especially the way we perceive it, what we encounter in public space and what is our dream version of it. The website presents data from an online workshop and interviews.

During the workshop, participants were able to share their subjective perspective on their immediate living environment in Berlin, both in terms of the status quo, as well as for their dreams and visions. The data generation was done by individual entries of the participants on an online map as well as written notes during group discussions.

The project was part of the Mapping Cities - Making Cities Seminar ↗ held by Professor Marian Dörk ↗ at FH Potsdam and developed by Kalen Harris, Leonie Schatter, Oskar Schmieg, Jonas Harant. We executed the workshop in cooperation with Changing Cities e.V. ↗. I was in charge of the web development and datavis design.

Rongin Shagor - the multicolored ocean - is a project by Oyoun. It shows poetic and artistic interpretations and inspirations that emerge from a poem by May Ayim. I worked on a website visualizing the network of inspiration and responses together with Zainab Tariq and Rita Eperjesi.