I grew up on a cattle ranch in southeast North Dakota and received my B.A. from Harvard in 2002 in Visual and Environmental Studies, where I focused on sculpture and photography. The ethnographic interests explored in my undergraduate work led me to pursue advanced degrees in the humanities – culminating in post doctoral research in the Living Environments Laboratory and work coordinating a digital humanities initiative at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I continue to create art bridging the capabilities of computers and the creative touch of humans and conduct research exploring computational approaches to humanities data. While my art work explores transformations of data into objects, my digital humanities research explores the opposite––turning complex works of human expression into numbers to enable new forms of analysis and comparison. I work through these approaches visually and enjoy testing a wide variety of methods for visualizations and virtual environments.
As a scholar and artist, I work through complex data and complex ideas visually to create new modes and methods for integrative insights. While my degrees and interests may seem varied, they all revolve around one key research question: how and why do we use physical objects (or metaphors and virtual renderings inspired by objects in the physical world) to convey the intangible (ideas, data, and information)?
Click the image above to see this cow carved in two minutes. I enjoy woodworking and strive to combine my abilities as an artist (free-form carving, eyeing shapes, etc) with cutting edge computer capabilities (various 3D modeling programs)
I am always interested in connecting with individuals, organizations or companies interested in exploring how humans engage with data, information and ideas. I am based out of St Louis, but work with groups across the country. Send me an email on your ideas or questions: carriearoy [a] gmail .com.
