I don’t observe, collect, or draw, but the language of data visualisation is still helping me make sense of becoming a mother.
Before becoming a mother, I had this vague idea that, since I identified as a “data person,” data would help me parent. As a chronically online millennial, the path to parenthood was paved with content about wake windows, developmental leaps, and tracking apps. After my daughter was born, it turned out this vague idea was both completely wrong, but also completely right in a completely different way.
As I tried to navigate becoming the mother of my newborn baby girl, it turned out that recorded observational data was of almost no use to me, and in many ways actively detrimental to my well being. In her very early days, we meticulously tracked her milk intake and nappy changes as part of our efforts to problem solve our way out of slow weight gain. The creation of that dataset was a factor in a complex constellation of stress and misery. Despite all the helpful apps, collecting this data was frustrating and difficult. I vividly remember crying in frustration at 2 a.m. because the app wasn’t configured to handle the draining “switch-feeding” breastfeeding strategy I’d been advised to use. I found myself snapping at my husband (many times) because he’d forgotten to log a dirty nappy. Bowel movements had become a metric for success, and if we didn’t write it down, had she even pooed?!
Of course she had. As our tiny baby grew, so did my confidence, and I was able to let go of the tracking apps. This letting go allowed me more space to grow and trust the infinite wealth of qualitative data that I was amassing in my mind, body, and heart. The unrecorded data of my lived experience has turned out to be invaluable in guiding me through this turbulent phase of my life.
As my daughter got a little older, I found myself starting to yearn for the languages of data visualisation to help me express what I was experiencing. At heart, I see data visualisation as a mechanism for exploring change, contrast, and difference. As a data practitioner, charts are an important part of my sense-making process. My matrescence has been one of the most transformative experiences of my life. It felt completely natural to reach for this toolkit to help me make sense of this profound change; but I wasn’t sure how.
I’ve long admired Dear Data and the field of autobiographical data visualisations it inspired. I’d previously used an autobiographical data visualisation to help me process my grief after my father’s death, painstakingly piecing together a dataset of memories and emotions. But in this new context of motherhood, I was deliberately bereft of observational data to work with. I had consciously banned myself from the act of observing and collecting data about the topic I now desperately wanted to explore and understand.
One morning, as I stood at the stove scrambling eggs for our breakfast, I mused to myself how I’d always hated scrambled eggs but now found myself eating them regularly. I poked the eggs with the spatula and turned them into a bar chart in the frying pan, then took a photograph. I had no way to go back and collect data about how frequently I’d previously eaten scrambled eggs. I had no intention of starting a log of each time I ate them; however, even though I didn’t have a dataset to work from, I’d still been able to create a reasonably accurate visual representation of the change in my scrambled egg consumption over time.
Around this time, I also had an opportunity to undertake an individual practice-led research project as part of my master’s program at the Australian National University’s School of Art and Design. I pitched to my supervisor that I wanted to try making “data-less” data visualisations. My project would be a practical exploration of whether I could use the language of data visualisation to communicate concepts without working from an actualised dataset. My supervisor was enthusiastic about the project, and also pushed me to try expressing myself in the native medium of social media—portrait video. I was way out of my comfort zone, but #MyMatrescenceProject was born.
I quickly settled into a workflow that involved physically piecing together a “sketch” of my concept using paper, yarn, and found objects. My personal creative practice has always revolved around making rather than drawing, so iterating ideas in this way felt both natural and like a way to reconnect with myself. I photographed each element on a desktop studio made from an old photographic enlarger stand and a make-up ring light, which gave me fine control of the photography. Then, each piece went through a digital editing, compositing, and animation workflow using Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, and After Effects. This project has allowed me to use an intuitive visual development approach, rather the procedural programmatic approach to data visualisation design that I use in other contexts. It’s a very different space to play in, but it feels very liberating and I’m having a lot of fun.
Working in video, I had to develop a sense of timing, which was challenging—particularly trying to get the transitions and reveals just right to land the jokes effectively. I also experimented with typography and explored using different typefaces to play different roles in the visualisations. Adding annotations in a script typeface was a breakthrough moment for the project, allowing me to directly reveal my authorial voice in the work. This voice is often deliberately obscured in data visualisations, but including it here felt critical. It is so important to me that this project shares my experience in a way that doesn’t suggest it is the experience. The discourse of motherhood is so often judgmental, comparative, and overly populated by the word “should” and other terms of its ilk. I wanted my project to create moments of connection and reflection, not alienation or shaming.
Through a happy accident, I finished the first set of videos and the project showcase website just in time for Australian Mother’s Day. I felt a bit weird and awkward about starting to share the work, which is a mix of joking and irreverent thoughts about parenting, and deeply personal reflections on my anxieties and struggles as a new mother. I started by sharing the project with other mothers that I know, and then more publicly on social media. The response the project has received has been incredibly affirming. It has meant so much to me to hear from people how they connected with the project and what they found meaningful. Many people sent me screenshots of pieces with which they particularly connected, as well as their own comments and stories. A common thread through the responses was how chart forms are a powerful way to encapsulate an idea that can be difficult to express in words.
These “data-less” data visualisations seem to work, even though the use of quantitative forms for non-quantified data feels like it might be breaking “the rules.” At the start of the project, I had wrestled with a concern that my experimentation was in some way misappropriation or an illegitimate use of the chart form. Discourse around data literacy frequently calls out the problems with non-existent, faked, or misrepresented data. Is a chart made with what I’m now fondly calling “spontaneous post-hoc data” or “speculative data” inherently dishonest? Randall Munroe has been comedically employing the chart form for nearly two decades. Observe, Collect, Draw popularised autobiographical or personal data visualisation. Although these are typically predicated on the visualisation of contemporaneously recorded observations, data feminist or data humanist perspectives explicitly make space for a broader definition of “data” that embraces the qualitative lived experience I am seeking to express.
#MyMatresenceProject relies heavily on my position as the expert in my own experience to establish the legitimacy of the work. Are these charts accurate? Mostly. Are they mis-leading? Not intentionally. Are they honest? Absolutely.
Katie Anderson-Kelly
Katie Anderson-Kelly is a researcher and creative who is interested in people, art, and data. Data visualisation is both the confluence of these interests and a tool that Katie uses to help her make sense of the world. Katie makes a lot of bar charts in her day job, so uses her personal creative practice as a way of exploring more experimental forms of data visualisation.
