DDC is an acronym for Distributed Data Collection, a term used by Curtis Bohlen of the Casco Bay Estuary Partnership to describe an approach that is different yet complementary to conventional scientific data collecting. Conventional collecting prioritizes high accuracy data collected with expensive equipment by trained personnel. The goal of DDC, the method to be used in Envisioning Change, is to work with students and project partners to inexpensively collect moderate as opposed to high accuracy, geo-tagged data via smart phones and other mobile devices. The data will be used to make visible the gradual and sometimes imperceptbile phenomenon of sea level change.

The images below are examples of DDC methods utilized in past projects. The first photograph shows USM Art student, Leigh Churchill collecting data for (in)UNDATION,  a visual poetry intervention about global warming and sea level rise. The second photograph shows Armelle Capo and Antoine Guillot collecting data for The Lost Sites of Le Mans, an Art and GIS project conducted in cooperation with Ecole Superieure Des Beaux Arts and Ecole Superieure Des Geometres et Topographes art in Le Mans, France.