Aurelia Vanelly Garces | Emotion Tagging: Data Visualization

 
This project, Emotion Tagging: Data Visualization, is a project that gives users the ability to not only participate in collecting data but as well as getting to see a visualization of how others feel when listening to music. The purpose behind this project was to gain a better understanding of how people react to music and how easy it is to collect that data.
We live in a world where now everything and anything we do is collected and taken from us on an everyday basis. Whether it is the photos you “like” on a social media platform or the songs you decide to “skip” on a streaming service all of this is taken from us. Rather than continuing to constantly question this matter, this project helps one be able to get a better understanding of how that is done.
Through the website that has been created a user is able to listen to a song and give their feedback on how the particular song makes them feel, after this they are able to experience a visualization of how others prior to them have taken in this specific song as well. The next question the user is given is, “How would you categorize this?”, this question is left to be open-ended so that the information that is collected can be left in a wider scope. Apart from this, the user gets to see the statistics and data that was previously collected. The data that was previously collected was done in a more specific way rather than leaving an open-ended question. This was done by listing nineteen emotions and having users select the specific emotion that they have tied to that song. This is the data that is showcased in a visualization that features audio waves.
This project targets two specific audiences; the first audience being the “average user”, the user who may not be aware on how data can be collected so easily. The project aims to show this to the user and have them be a bit more aware of how this is done. The second audience that this project is aimed towards is those who do this on an everyday basis. The big corporations and industry executives who can see the data collected; specifically at what point in what song do people feel a certain type of emotion. This can be used in multiple ways, for example, a music executive can see when and where in a song do people react more or show specific emotions.
The initial questions that brought this project to life was, “Why do we tie genres to songs? Why is it that I may feel one way when listening to a song and you may feel a different way?” Although there may be deeper and more psychological answers to this, the point of this project is to take something so personal like our emotions and showcase them as well as collect them so one can explore that a bit more. Above all, the key takeaway from this project is to be able to open the floor to questioning a bit more on how data collection is done.