Jer Thorp (born 1974/5) is a Canadian data artist from

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

. Before becoming a data artist, he was originally trained as a geneticist. He holds an adjunct faculty position at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

’s

Tisch School of the Arts The New York University Tisch School of the Arts (commonly referred to as Tisch) is the performing, cinematic, and media arts school of New York University. Founded on August 17, 1965, as the School of the Arts at New York University, Tisch ...

in the

Interactive Telecommunications Program The New York University Tisch School of the Arts (commonly referred to as Tisch) is the performing, cinematic, and media arts school of New York University. Founded on August 17, 1965, as the School of the Arts at New York University, Tisch ...

. He was the Data Artist in Residence at the

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

in 2012, where he created ''Cascade'', a tool for visualizing how stories were shared across social media. and the Innovator-In-Residence at the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

in 2017.

Work

He and Jake Barton created an algorithm that arranged the names of those killed in the

9/11 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

, respecting their familial, personal and business relationships with each other; his visualization of their relatedness is exhibited at the 9/11 Memorial in New York City. Thorp collaborated with Mark Hansen, Ben Rubin, and Local Projects to create an interactive timeline of the attacks. Thorp's visualization of the influence of

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein (14 March 187918 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence f ...

theory of relativity The theory of relativity usually encompasses two interrelated physics theories by Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity, proposed and published in 1905 and 1915, respectively. Special relativity applies to all physical ph ...

on contemporary scientific research appeared in ''

Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it, with more than 150 Nobel Pri ...

'''s September 2015 commemorative issue on Einstein and was featured in ''The Best American Infographics 2016''. Thorp is the co-creator of a data-based public artwork called Herald / Harbinger in

downtown Calgary Downtown Calgary is a dense urban district in central Calgary, Alberta. It contains the second largest concentration of head offices in Canada, despite only being the country's fourth largest city in terms of population. The downtown is divided in ...

. He co-founded The Office for Creative Research, which was a

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

data management and visualization consultancy. He is one of the founders of the Eyeo festival. In 2021, Thorp released his first book, ''Living in Data: A Citizen's Guide to a Better Information Future''.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Thorp, Jer 21st-century Canadian artists Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Data and information visualization experts Artists from Vancouver Tisch School of the Arts faculty