Data as Culture
20Hz (2011)
Semiconductor
20Hz observes a geo-magnetic storm occurring in the Earth’s upper atmosphere. Working with data collected from the CARISMA radio array and interpreted as audio, we hear tweeting and rumbles caused by incoming solar wind, captured at the frequency of 20 Hertz. Generated directly by the sound, tangible and sculptural forms emerge suggestive of scientific visualisations. As different frequencies interact both visually and aurally, complex patterns emerge to create interference phenomena that probe the limits of our perception.
Body 01000010011011110110010001111001 (2012)
Stanza
Body is a sculpture which responds to the emergent properties of the environment in South London where the artist’s network is situated for the duration. It represents the changing life and complexity of urban space as a dynamic, kinetic artwork.
Metrography (2012)
Benedikt Groß and Bertrand Clerc
Humans have created various sets of instruments to help them find their way around the landscape: maps, signage, satellite navigation, etc. Maps are abstracted projections of the real world’s spatial arrangement, and whether intentional or incidental, they are loose artefacts of reality. For instance the geographical structure of transportation networks are often reshaped to provide users with more understandable transit maps. These distortions have a major influence on people’s perception of a city’s geography, to the point they get stored mentally and become the collective representation of the real world’s geography. Metrography explores this phenomenon for the most famous of the transit maps: the London Underground.
The Obelisk (2012)
The Obelisk symbolises a metaphorical exploration of the magical side of diagrams and their role of visualising facts as an attempt of objectifying, organising and defining reality.
Scanning online news websites in real time, the artwork changes from opaque to transparent, according to the amount of references to the four main crimes against peace (genocide, crimes against humanity, crimes of aggression and crimes of war), as they were codified during the Nuremberg trials and which can still be found in today’s online news. It does so to remind us that the road to peace is still long.
The SKOR Codex (2012)
La Société Anonyme
The SKOR Codex is a printed book which will be sent to different locations on earth. It contains binary encoded image and sound files selected to portray the diversity of life and culture at the Foundation for Art and Public Domain (SKOR), and is intended for any intelligent terrestrial life form, or for future humans, who may find it. The files are protected from bitrot, software decay and hardware failure via a transformation from magnetic transitions on a disk to ink on paper, safe for centuries. Instructions in a symbolic language explain the origin of the book and indicate how the content is to be decoded.
Still Lifes and Oscillators 1 (2012)
Ben Garrod
Via a convoluted process of compression, conversion and transmission; information documenting the site of the painting is broken down to data and de-cohered, mistranslated and finally planted in John Conway’s Game of Life. The fruits of this postefficient process, the still lifes and oscillators are sampled and painted onto the floor, ceiling, walls and furniture from a projected image so that when re-photographed from the point of view of the original shot it is flattened to 2D, bringing the plane of the screen across the space of verifiable reality.
Text Trends (2012)
Martin John Callanan
Text Trends deals with the spectacularization of information. Using Google data it explores the vast search data of its users. The animation takes the content generated by search queries and reduces this process to its essential elements: search terms vs. frequency searched for over time, presented in the form of a line graph.
Three flames ate the sun, and big stars were seen (2012)
Phil Archer
The title is taken from a Chinese inscription from 1302 BC, in which a solar eclipse is described. The work uses data from NASA’s research into solar eclipses (2137 BC to 1991 AD) to calculate the dates of eclipses throughout history and tie them to recorded historical events. A blue laser is used to ‘paint’ a representation of each eclipse onto photochromic pigment, which then gradually fades away to be replaced by the next one.
Vending Machine (2009)
Ellie Harrison
An old vending machine is reprogrammed to release free snacks only when search terms relating to the recession make the headlines on the BBC News RSS feed. Visitors are welcome to take the snacks as-and-when this happens.
