A look back at 2011.

The year is at its end—a moment to reflect upon twelve months of experiments, achievements, and blunders. 2011 opened with multiple trips to Karlsruhe, Germany to collaborate with the ZKM Center for Art and Media on a very early version of trans_actions. In February Stewart served on the judging panel for TED's Ads Worth Spreading competition and tutoring a month long workshop at the RCA with Jürg Lehni. April was packed: More visits to ZKM, the Creativity and Technology conference posted my Code Play lecture video, Paola Antonelli wrote an article for Domus about data visualization that used Exit as an example, and I posted some odd X-Files triptychs.

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)’s Talk to Me exhibition is halfway through its run. If you're in the New York area drop in before the show closes on November 7th. The exhibition includes two Stewdio works. The first is Exit (2008), an immersive data animation created in collaboration with architecture studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Warning Office, et al. (See also Talk to Me: Exit.) The second Stewdio piece included in Talk to Me is Windmaker (2007), an ambient weather widget that applies local wind conditions to live websites. (See also Talk to Me: Windmaker.)

Later this month New York City's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) will unveil Talk to Me, a new design exhibition curated by Paola Antonelli. We're excited to announce two Stewdio works will be included in the show. The first is Exit (2008), an immersive data animation created in collaboration with architecture studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro, et al. (Exit will be represented through video documentation as the actual piece is physically far too large to be included in this particular showing.) The second Stewdio piece is Windmaker (2007), an ambient weather widget that applies local wind conditions to live websites. Talk to Me will run from July 24 through November 7, 2011.

Our 2008 collaboration, Exit, has been included in MoMA design curator Paola Antonelli's article on data visualization in the English / Italian design and architecture journal Domus (issue 946). Page 114 features our “Carbon Emissions Responsibility” map. For a description of, and videos from the Exit project see http://stewd.io/work/exit. Update: The article has now been posted online. You can read it at http://domusweb.it/en/design/states-of-design-01-visualization

Stewart and Bobby have returned to ZKM (Center for Art and Media) in Karlsruhe, Germany to continue their collaboration with the Global Art and the Museum on a new data animation piece. The work will exist as a panoramic projection--opening this September at the museum. The two are constructing the animation in their own Bronson framework, initially developed for their work on the Exit (Terre Natale) collaboration in 2008 and incrementally enhanced and refined for later works such as Under Vine.

New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is planning a new exhibition for summer 2011 titled Talk to Me which promises to be nerdtastic. The exhibition team, lead by senior curator, Paola Antonelli, is sifting through an ever-mutating list of potential pieces for the show. This queue of artworks currently includes two Stewdio pieces: the collaborative Exit (Terre Natale) data animation and our Jed's Other Poem music video for the band Grandaddy. Some friendly faces appear in the queue as well: studio mate Jürg Lehni and recent studio guest Jaakko Tuomivaara.

Bobby and Stewart are currently revising new data visualization animations of the global wine market for inclusion in SFMOMA's exhibition How Wine Became Modern opening next month in San Francisco. The two are building out the graphics using Bronson--their custom animation framework originally created for the Exit piece in 2008 and now two years evolved. Also next month, Stewart is giving a talk about Stewdio at the Creativity and Technology conference in London on the 10th. Further down the road? More collaboration with ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany. A workshop for Sara De Bondt's students at the Royal College of Art by Jürg and Stewart. And perhaps a holiday present for the Internet to follow up last year's Browser Pong. There's always more around the bend.

Tonight, Exit (also known as "Terre Natale") opens at the AlhondigaBilbao in Spain. If you're in Bilbao don't miss this opportunity to experience the immersive 360-degree data projection. Exit (Terre Natale) is a 45-minute immersive visualization of human migration data divided into six narratives. Our historical focus is primarily from 1990 through today, augmented by occasional older data points or forecasts into the future. Humans migrate for various reasons. Political turmoil may create refugee migrations. Environmental disasters create refugees of a different sort. Some people migrate to wealthier economies sending micro-transactions, or remittances, home to their native land. We have recently crossed a threshold; 50% of humans have migrated from rural areas into cities. As of 2007 one out of every two people is now an urban dweller. See the Exit (Terre Natale) projection description and links to videos at http://stewd.io/w/exit. Today also marks 30 years since Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis hung himself.