Data and the Arts: Media in the Information Age

Day of Civic HackingJune 1-2, 2013

The Artist’s Role in the Datasphere

• To interpret and criticize – data flows through the artist, who experiences it and synthesizes sub-rational conclusions.

• To enlist the role of the senses – data is made visible or audible, to explore and understand.

• To evangelize data uses – art is propaganda, art pre-visualizes the future.

• To please – art’s domain is the aesthetic and emotional. To make pretty stuff.

How Data is Used Artistically

• Raw material for unrelated outcomes – algorithmic art

• The central object of study – visualization methods, or reinterpretation to make direct

• A reflection of distant realities to re-experience - real-time feeds, open API’s (think cubism or pointillism)

• The fabric for reality’s contextual clothing– (data is somehow the subject matter)

Specifically Government Data

• The role of data in direct democracy. The Social Realism of Democracy.

Exploring Data

• Science: the Computer Science Viz Lab and RSMAS uses computer generated world to fly-by the fault under Port au Prince

Exploring Data

• The Viz Lab with Dept of Biology explores neuronal connections in a fly brain

Experiencing Data

• Making sensible the abstract Passionnement by Piotr Kowalski (frequency spectrum in contrast to meaning)

Experiencing Data

• Making visible the crisis of world population Population Cube by Piotr Kowalski

The New Data Vernacular

• Data is all around, it is part of our world Last Login by Mika Rosenberg,, collage with computer babble.

The New Data Vernacular

• Use of NASA data sets and NTSC distorted video Black Zero by Aldo Tambellinni at the Tate Modern

Using Data

• To make music, such as the FMS symphony

Using Data

• To make attractive and informative displays The D3.js library

Data Is Reality

• Real time financial data streams - data as a more real reality

Data Shows Reality

• Data from NASA – self-reflection on a greater reality too distant to perceive directly

Data Decides Reality

• Trial transcripts – traces in the sand of human aspiration and institutions The Brancusi Trial

Conclusion

• Data/Computation Duality; the Media Reality Media Burn by Ant Farm