Kurak of tolerance

Data Art Project 

*This project won the special prize (jury choice) at the Moscow Dataviz Awards, 2021*

The inspiration of this project came during a visit of Nadezhda Andrianova, a data art designer from Moscow, to AUCA in November 2019. The idea was to create an object of data art about our community, by our community. 

When we started working on the project in March 2020, we had to do it online, through emails and zoom meetings. The group of the project participants got together through an open call, it consisted of AUCA students, alumni, faculty and staff. Nadia, our data art consultant, was joining zoom calls from Moscow. 

We define the main topic of our project as tolerance. How open-minded and tolerant is the AUCA community? Where do we stand between traditional and new? Where do we dream to live, who are we friends with, what’s our take on feminism and LGBTQ rights? 

We made a survey of 39 questions and received 305 answers. A method of visual encoding this information is ‘kurak’, a national central asian type of carpet made in patchwork technique. You can see the answers to these questions in our ‘kurak of tolerance’.

More about the project:

http://bit.ly/dataart_kurak

Project team:

Project lead Anastasia Valeeva

Project manager Adelia Safai

Design consultant Nadezhda Andrianova

Artist Aziza Zhusupbekova

Project participants:

Viktoria Petrova, Ekaterina Sanamiants, Anastasia Lysogorova, Nodira Satyvoldieva, Aigerim Atantai, Batma Shukurbekova

Administrative help:

Lilia Muslimova, Viktoria Petrova, Begim Fayzullobekova and AUCA staff who helped . 

Special thanks to AUCA president Andrew Kuchins for endorsing us on this journey. 

The funding for the project came from the Presidential Research & Education Fund.

Warm thanks to everybody who contributed their time to the questionnaire.