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| Ecoid data visualisation from The Confluence Project (2012) - iDAT |
Highlights of Collider: Exploring Hybridity held at RAMM on 7th November as part of the ERSC Festival were Dr Susan Kelly on 'human chimerism' and Dr Robin Durie on the evolution of culture in robots. Dr Katharine Tyler on 'white ethnicity' was also extremely thought-provoking. There were also great contributions from SW artists Susan Boafo and Paul Ramsay.
Slightly more related to current developments in my practice, Data Ecologies on 10th November was concerned with methods for 'making the invisible visible'. I especially liked the distinction drawn between dirty data and so-called clean data 'uncorrupted' by human subjectivity. Dirty data relates to qualitative research and 'citizen scientists'; clean data is usually quantitative information gathered via instruments.
There were fascinating contributions from Alice Sharp of Invisible Dust and Simon Blackmore from The Owl Project. We also had an opportunity to visit the university's Immersive Vision Theatre where we experienced a giant digital model of a 3D fruit fly reassembled from electron-microscoped 'slices', and a visualisation of the constellations viewed from a non-earthcentric perspective (ie with depth).
I learned lots but, if I have one criticism, it's that many of the artists and works featured weren't really engaging with data as their material, they were simply using it as jumping off points for their ideas. Or (and I find this less forgivable) as something to pretty up for aesthetic results. This is frustrating because data itself can be far more surprising and interesting than anything we can invent. It just needs a little help to materialise in a form human senses can comprehend.
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