Working on the topic of digital data and how to explore its role in contemporary society, I have approached this subject from a number of perspectives. I have listened to people’s stories of working with data or giving it away, I have researched and visualised data polices and public data-sets, and I have looked at what body parts and gestures are growing out of data production. In collaboration with Loes Bogers from the with the Visual Methodologies Collective at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences we have been able carry out large scrapes of online image material shared around pregnancy, from which we subsequently developed a series of collage approaches around. Situating my artistic practice as ‘live-investigations’ such as the work The National Catalogue of Savings Opportunities as the Body Recovery Unit (with Bogers), the artworks are made from ‘living’ streams of data, managerial reports or policies using data as evidence, exploring how to use artistic practice as cultural form, through which we can interrogate society. In this connection want to explore how modelling data in 3D form can provide new ways to respond to respond to the context of data production was the motivation behind seeking out a broader skill-set.
I decided to focus my process of learning 3D modelling software and experimenting with the laser cutters on data produced through everyday living such as GPS data and movement tracking, to explore how 3D sculptures can give new meaning or challenge our perception of this data, and how it can be used. I began reworking a series of existing drawing series around ‘domestic data production’ which is based on the tracing the body movements associated with mobile phone use in the home. I order to model these drawings as individual objects, I decided to focus on the possibility of shapes emerging out of the movement traced drawings (see fig.) In my next post I will talk about how I modelled these shapes in Rhino.
