So this newsletter will be a bit different. Less cheerful, perhaps - less cohesive too. But it reflects the ideas we think about, especially the need for a critical approach towards data. At Domestic Data Streamers, our work often involves finding stories and ways to speak about difficult issues, because we believe real change begins with emotional understanding - not just informational.

But we also realize that data has its limits. How do we speak about unspeakable horrors? Quantify boundless injustice? Visualize the unfathomable? “Data” the non-“data”? Above all, this newsletter is about presence in absence - emotional data from the cracks and gaps.

🔥 Flames of the month

For an example of “undata-bility” see our recent project, “Not All Sparks Are Equal”. Watch the full video here, and read the article here - a projection mapping for the façade of the Design Hub in Barcelona, it explores how AI and pattern analysis fail to distinguish between “peaceful fires” (like correfocs) and “belligerent” ones (like urban unrest). Because not just large-scale atrocities - but subtle, infinitesimal nuances - can escape the lens of data.

✊ Questions of the month

A big part of our reflection took shape through our latest project with UNICEF Palestine. It’s a multifaceted project: a traveling exhibition (now in Dublin, previously Madrid, will go to other cities in Europe) and an online version (explore it here). Both ask five basic questions about life for children in Gaza - like “How do children get water in the Gaza Strip?” or “What do they eat?”

A central concept is “missing pictures” - the absence of images of Palestinian children thriving. It’s a visualization through absence, a visibility through lack. Along the way, we found resources where the amplitude of the issue lives not in charts but in the sheer density of loss. One example: 1,516-page document by the Gaza Health Ministry, listing 50,000+ Palestinians confirmed killed since Oct 2023 - including 15,600 children across 474 pages, with 27 pages for infants under 1. The list is its own visualization of horror. Not through charts or graphics - but through scale. Through names.

👗 Dresses of the month

An installation purely about absence: The REDress Project responds to the 1,000+ missing and murdered Aboriginal women across North America. With red dresses hung in public spaces, it makes a silent but violent presence visible - through gaps and loss.

🎥 Film of the month

Oscar-winner The Zone of Interest follows a German Auschwitz commandant’s family living next to the camp - meters away from atrocity. But it never shows it directly. Instead, the film focuses on the family’s daily life: gardening, meals, bedtime stories. In the background, we hear machines, screams, gunshots. It’s a soundscape of horror that becomes mundane - a backdrop that becomes forefront, and a portrait of the banality of evil - the manifestation of evil through the inability to recognize it as such, as it becomes invisible to the perpetrator.

🎶 Soundtrack of the month

To end on a more positive note (get it?), check out The Healing Project, by Samora Pinderhughes. It’s an arts organization collective developing music, visual arts and a whole constellation of creative works by artists aiming to dismantle structural violence and create healing spaces. Listen to their wonderful Tiny Desk concert here.

You have now made it to the end - but wait! Starting next Friday, we will be on “Studio Shutdown Mode” for two weeks, enjoying a company-wide summer vacation. So we will need your help for something: our first ever… 🥁🥁🥁

Audience-curated newsletter! 

The ask is simple: send us your top recommendation for this summer, it can be a book, exhibition, data visualization game, podcast, a quirky corner of the internet or a random date in history where “nothing happened”. Everything goes. Include a short rationale, your name and hometown - or just write “anonymous.” You can DM us on Instagram (@domesticdatastreamers) or reply to this email! 

We’ll pick 5 favs, send them in our next newsletter, and post them on Instagram. Until then - 

Summertime, and the livin' is easy
For the smugglers of stories in the data speakeasy x