Family Touch
"Family Touch" is a detailed study and documentation of everything Chandrasekaran’s family touched over various one-hour periods. The series of data portraits tell the story of an exhausted mother, rambunctious toddler, elderly dog, and a father during an ADHD-crash.
The first in the series notes everything Chandrasekaran touched during nap hour awaiting her daughter’s waking cries. The data collected is personal, observational, and inherently flawed. It is not only organized into object categories, but further dissected by recording the reasoning for the touch. The record-taking process was a strange balance between going forward with intended, touch-necessary actions, becoming acutely aware of touching certain things, involuntary or unavoidable touch, and later while painstakingly organizing the list into categories, remembering things that had been touched after the fact.
A more rudimentary symbol system visualizes a similar observation of her toddler’s activity, and is reflective of instinctual, involuntary touches, simple discovery, and her short attention span. Despite her daughter only being awake for 40 minutes of the hour of data collection, there are as many data points as the first piece. Chandrasekaran discovers how much of her child’s world revolved around play, learning her body, pushing things out of her way, and the artist herself.
The next in the series records the routine of the elderly family dog, nearing the end of his life. If the data collection had not started from the moment he barked to request help getting up, the piece might have been totally blank. Instead, it covers a thrilling eight-minute quest of him in search of Chandrasekaran’s husband, and then 52 minutes sleeping in the kitchen, with a few pats when her husband emerged from working upstairs.
The last visualization focuses on her husband, who typically has two modes of operation — mode one: Full ADHD-fueled bouncing from task to task, or mode two: End-of-the-month recovery where he essentially sleeps the same amount as the dog. The data is recorded during mode two, while observation was more easily accessible. His symbol system is the only visualization that includes all members of the family, and Chandrasekaran utilizes symbols seen in previous pieces and centers his piece as the glue of it all, much like she sees the role of their partnership in their family.
The series asks the viewer to consider: What do your touch patterns say about you? During viewing, you have probably touched your face or body, your computer or phone, maybe even someone else in the room. How much does touch play into the connections in your life? Can increased awareness of touch bring light to links and divisions?
To Chandrasekaran, this bizarre study was a way she fell in love with her family all over again: a series of data portraits as beautiful as the people they represent.
Padmini Chandrasekaran
Padmini Chandrasekaran is a graphic designer, educator, and artist based in Lowell, Massachusetts with a BFA in Communication Design from Parsons, The New School for Design, and an MFA in Graphic Design from Boston University.
She is an associate teaching professor of graphic design at UMass Lowell and a member of Radius Collective, a nine-member artist group that has exhibited across the US and internationally.
In her creative practice, she is fascinated by small human experiences and how we can give them weight and importance by documenting daily minutiae, universal feelings, and experiences. Her work combines graphical image-making and data visualization with storytelling that speaks to personal but universal themes related to belonging, insecurities, and personal connections.
To learn more about Chandrasekaran and her work, visit her personal website or the website for Radius Collective, an international group of artists, designers, and educators.
