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 most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the city, up from 631,486 in 2016. Th ...

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include ...

. 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 research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, ...

’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, Tisch is a training ground for artists, scholars of the a ...

in the

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

. He was the Data Artist in Residence at the

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

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 the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The librar ...

in 2017. He and Jake Barton created an algorithm that arranged the names of those killed in the

9/11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...

, 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 Jacob ("Jake") Barton (born November 7, 1972, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American designer, and Founder of Local Projects, an experience design firm for museums, brands and public spaces based in New York, New York. His work focuses on storyt ...

to create an interactive timeline of the attacks. Thorp's visualization of the influence of

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theor ...

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

on contemporary scientific research appeared in ''

Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it i ...

'''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 borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Kings County is the most populous Administrative divisions of New York (state)#County, county in the State of New York, ...

data management and visualization consultancy. He is one of the founders of the

Eyeo festival The Eyeo Festival is a yearly conference for artists who work with data and code. It takes place in Minneapolis. The conference began in 2011, and has taken place yearly since then, typically at the Walker Art Center. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, ...

. 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 Information visualization experts Artists from Vancouver Tisch School of the Arts faculty