> Data and art: November Theme of the Month
Database Imaginary opens later today and although there's plenty still
to be done, the bulk of the exhibition is now installed. Looking
around the space and on the website, two dispositions spring to mind as
informing the work included here by Steve, Sarah and Anthony. Perhaps
those on CRUMB who are better placed to comment might wish to follow
on...?
Firstly Nicolas Bourriaud's Relational Aesthetics seems to whisper
through the gallery, but also older more modern texts like Benjamin's
(inevitable :) 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.'
In the case of the latter, I'm thinking of when Benjamin suggests:
"The history of every art form shows critical epochs in which a certain
art form aspires to effects which could be fully obtained only with a
changed technical standard, that is to say, in a new art form."
In many ways, much of the work in this show seems to point toward such
effects but mostly in or referring to the 'digital' rather than the,
'mechanical'
With Bourriaud's essay, I downloaded a pdf citing an extract from the
book this morning, and looking through it again, I was struck by the
various italicised terms coined in it and used to stress the
fundamental argument being developed throughout the text. Here are a
few in the order in which they occur:
a) new
b) situation
c) tenant of culture
d) Artwork as social interstice
e) relational
f) urbanisation
g) [that] state of encounter imposed on people
h) linkage
i) bond
j) tightens the space of relations
k) interstice
l) a setting of elements on one another (the way ice 'sets')
m) keeps together
n) bonding agent
Of course by itemising these fragments in this way, I run roughshod
over Bourriaud's work, but the essay does dwell in the nooks of
connection, relation and relative values often pegged, Bourriaud would
argue, to the situation inhabited by the artists' of the moment.
And so much of the work in Database Imaginary seems to show us examples
of artistic expression actually being these points of connection or
configuration or representations of it.
An example would be Angie Waller's, 'Data Mining the Amazon' images
which map and graph the filtered database of the online bookstore
Amazon.com. In doing so, Angie is able to make conclusions like
'Employees of Microsoft listen to Nelly Furtado' while, 'readers of
Margaret Thatcher’s biography tend towards Opera' but rather than
compiling this information conventionally, she makes a series of
drawings.
Actually, I particularly like item, 'l) a setting of elements on one
another (the way ice 'sets')' as it conjures, for me, the ever
potential mutability of databases however concrete they may seem.
bw
Jon
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Thomson & Craighead
http://www.thomson-craighead.net /
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Currently & until Nov 2005: Algorithmic Revolution, ZKM, Karlsruhe,
Germany
Next Week: Database Imaginary, Walter Philips Gallery, Banff, Canada
The week after: Pass the Time of Day, Gasworks, London
December: ...dreaming of a white... Arts and Business, London
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