Transforming data into meaningful stories
Tiziana Alocci is a London-based behavioural cartographer, data artist, and lecturer. Her work explores the emotional dimension of data, creating immersive "maps" that translate human behaviour, emotions, and memories into visual and auditory experiences interlacing science with poetry.
Data-driven album cover series 2019-23
Beginning in 2019, this project saw the creation of twelve album covers for a Berlin-based record company.
Beginning in 2019, this project saw the creation of a series of album covers for the Berlin-based record label Sum Over Histories. Each cover artwork began with a habitual listening phase – playing artists’ songs alongside daily activities. The most resonant track was selected and visualised using a central circle motif, inspired by architectural elements and celestial phenomena.
Each cover artwork was started with a list of songs by one artist. The process began with habitual listening, and playing the songs during daily activities like working, resting, and running. The most resonant track was then chosen as the album's ambassador. The next step was visualization, consistently featuring the circle as a central motif. The radial formation for each cover was inspired by architectural elements – such as stained glass, windows and domes – and celestial phenomena – like planets and galaxies. These visual prompts shaped the abstraction of the selected song’s waveform. The sound's anatomy, pre-visualised within a frequency graph, became optically tangible as a circular form.
In the final phase, the existing frequency marks were manipulated to reflect the emotional and intuitive vibrations evoked by the song. This converted the static waveform into fluid, sense-driven patterns. The visual markers pointed to sensations derived from the song, varying between spiky or sharp, blurred or wavy. Some emulated characteristics of flowers or jellyfish, reflecting the initial experience of consuming the song elementally.
Saint Is, Something in Common EP, 2019
Invoker, RA EP, 2020
Saint Is, Before We Get Old EP, 2020
Various artists, Path Integral IV, 2020
Imperieux, Modus Operandi, 2021
Flageolet, Tension EP, 2021
Ivory, Let the Mistery Be EP, 2021
Aldebaran, Severe EP, 2021
Skatman, Trial and Error EP, 2021
Ross From Friends, Thesho, 2022
Boys Be KKo, Lop Nor, 2022
Fondata Magazine – Visualising wine tasting data
A commission for Fondata Magazine, this project was inspired by Professor Xiao-Li Meng's blend of wine and statistics. The work depicted nine wine ratings using a visual vocabulary of symbols, each reflecting mean ratings and a selection of shapes indicating value nuances.
Made as a custom data visualization created for Fondata Magazine, this project was inspired by Professor Xiao-Li Meng's blend of wine and statistics. The work depicted nine wine ratings using a visual vocabulary of symbols, each reflecting mean ratings and a selection of shapes indicating value nuances. Meng, who is the Whipple V.N. Jones Professor of Statistics at Harvard University and the founding Editor-in-Chief of Harvard Data Science Review, embarked on an unexpected journey when one of his students proposed merging wine and statistics. The journey saw the marrying of wine-tasting sessions with statistical lectures, exploring correlations between subjective wine ratings and numerical analysis.
The visualization for Fondata Magazine made use of distilled data from a nine-figure table, each figure representing ratings assigned to different types of wine. Employing a custom visual language, the piece encoded these ratings using unique symbols. Arranged in three columns, each symbol conveyed the mean rating for a specific wine tasted in sequence. The symbols' contours varied: smoother curves indicated lower ratings, while sharper spikes represented higher values.
The project sought to illuminate Meng's interdisciplinary teaching method, illustrating complex statistical concepts through the lens of wine tasting. His pioneering blend of wine appreciation and statistical analysis continues to foster new insights, engaging both students and enthusiasts alike.
Selected clients
The National Gallery (London), Unit London, Lufthansa Group, British Library, David Gilmour, Condé Nast, Robertet Group, The Orb, The Guardian, Thomson Reuter Foundation, Corriere della Sera, University of the Arts London, Open Data Institute, Sum Over Histories, BBC, RCS Media Group, Signal Noise, Nexus Agency, HUGE Inc.