Design Informatics at the 2026 Edinburgh Science Festival

Our Design Informatics Master students were joined by students from across the University to create this year’s exhibition “Designing Global Data Interactions” for the Edinburgh Science Festival. The 17 creative works explored relationships between diverse sets of data, connecting local and global at multiple physical scales. Culminating weeks of theoretical and practical investigation each project challenged students to examine the interdependence of ecological systems, technology and the body, and to translate these into provocative and informative experiences for the public. The work required students to solve physical and spatial problems in an aesthetically sensitive and critically informed way, employing clarity in presentation and interaction design to support rich engagement. Computer vision met human gestures and human bodies met algorithms as visitors stretched and contorted to prove they were human, test social boundaries, and calculate the environmental cost of being polite to machines. Physical efforts were quantised into calories and converted to carbon while the chaotic swing of a pendulum mapped microbial interactions beneath the soil. The impact of urban noise on robins was scrawled by wing-like robotic arms to produce human-sized circular drawings of ominous beauty. Lichens sonically sprang to life when sprayed with water while the polyrhythms of algae and seabird interaction played out on a mechanical musical instrument. While this multitude of sensory stimuli might have overwhelmed the message, the elegance with which the students fit their installations to the fabric of Inspace ensured the only distractions were intentional. Video of a conversational companion faded as your gaze was attracted by social media feeds. The multicolour glow of a cloud-like umbrella drew attention to the psychological impact of light and weather in northern latitudes. In some cases the data was hidden, requiring active physical investigation like shining a UV torch to explore the lifecycle of salmon spawned in the River Tay. In another the invisible was made spectacular as you blew across a pipe to see pollen data disperse and reform over a large map of Edinburgh at your feet. “Feeding” seeds into a vitrine triggered a holographic demonstration of eutrophication and peering into a sculpture evoking the cross section of a tree revealed the interactions of beetle and parasitic bees within a forest ecosystem. The exhibition once again highlighted how data, research, theory and practice combine to resonate poetically and impactfully.