I help good ideas
actually happen.

I see this work for all kinds of things: busy mom speaking into AI helping her with the mental load, epiphany about work or life on a walk in the woods, capturing a thought while driving and acting on it instantly --> I truly believe in a world where AI takes our burdens.

I’m impressed with a report mockup ChatGPT generated. The model must have been trained on @storywithdata generous AI Primer document. Last time I had ChatGPT mockup dashboards was over a year ago and those were little aesthetically pleasing and quiet honestly nonsense.

I feel excited, even nervous to post this... But let me ask you first: How do you feel? Can you name it? Can you give it an expression? Or can you maybe even draw or paint it?

For the past three months, I’ve been experimenting with treating feelings as data…

I paused, felt and painted a mark based on my emotions 4 times daily (sounds like a medicine prescription and maybe it is :D). I've always loved to combine different disciplines and artistic cultures. I see data everywhere. To me our feelings, our emotions, our thoughts, our nervous system, even our breath is data too (shout out to Anke Buchmann who makes inner states visible with clay).

Find out more in my Substack essay (link in the comments below). I wrote about the experiment and why I call it “Feel Data”.

I visualized my breathing. I took a piece of clay and spread it out. And for each breath, I would press a stroke with my finger into the clay. And after a minute, I would have a visual peace, a visualization of my breathing. My very humanness pressed into form. I could go ahead and fire it and glaze it and hang it on the wall.

To me, what this data art stands for is…awareness. When we create a visualization, a graph, a chart, data art we make invisible things visible. And by breathing into the clay with my finger, I have not only created a “chart”, but actually also data about myself. Which in return informs me about myself. It’s recorded feedback. It gives me meaning about myself. I guess this is what Giorgia Lupi calls Data Humanism.

Is there a takeaway gained by looking at this data art? Not really. But there is a great takeaway to be gained by FEELING the data yourself, taking a medium and imprinting your being alive in it. I can highly recommend to grab whatever you have available - clay, paint, stones, leaves, Legos, strings - and let your body become the SEISMOGRAPH for what you feel and experience.

I’m dreaming into what AI could be… Not something that pulls us into our heads, but something that meets us in our bodies, our lives, our walks in the woods. I imagine a woman, maybe you, maybe your daughter, living a soft, creative, integrated life. And AI isn’t a task manager. It’s a witness. A companion. A tool that holds her inspiration as it arrives, not after she sits down at a desk.

I believe AI is not meant to replace what is sacred about being human. It’s here to take the burden — to automate the parts of life that weigh us down, so we can return to a life where creativity, joy, play, community and connection to nature are not “weekend activities,” but the center of existence. I dream of a future where AI runs the systems in the background and humanity enjoys soul expression. Where every day feels like the garden of Eden. This is the world I want to help birth.