Toraya (AKA Crankbunny) will discuss her work in illustration, animation and paper engineering as well as her journey as a freelance artist.

Being a fan usually starts with loving a given series, franchise, author, band, game, etc., but it rarely ends there. For many, fandom provides a sense of community, a catalyst for producing original creative content, or both. Flourish Klink and Elizabeth Minkel, creators and hosts of Fansplaining, will discuss their adventures in podcasting and fan culture, and how, perhaps even with a little help from the two of them, fans and the creative industries may have learned to stop worrying and love each other.

How has “blindcasting”—casting a television show without specifying a character’s race—affected what we watch and how we watch it? What do shows like Scandal reveal about how Americans define social progress? Professor Kristen Warner will explore the intersection of primetime television and the concept of racial colorblindness, gauging whether strategies like blindcasting can bring about enduring racial progress or just the illusion of parity.

In this talk, Jer Thorp shares his beautiful and moving data visualization projects, helping audiences put abstract data into a human context. From graphing an entire year’s news cycle, to mapping the way people share articles across the internet, to the 9/11 Memorial in Manhattan, Thorp’s cutting-edge visualizations use technology and data to help us learn about the way we use digital technologies, become more empathetic in the data age, and ultimately, tell the story of our lives. How can understanding the human side of data lead to innovation and effective change? What value is there in the novel and interactive approaches to data visualization? And what are the business applications of creative data-focused research? Thorp teaches audiences how adding meaning and narrative to huge amounts of data can help people take control of the information that surrounds them, and revolutionize the way we utilize data.