How we Imagine Data and Data Reimagines Us

Abstract

The Data Imaginary: Fears and Fantasies at Griffith University Art Museum presents works of art and design that interpret and negotiate the ambiguous effects of data and aim to show how data can be created and used more inclusively. We use the term ‘data imaginary’ to describe the ways in which citizens embody data and how data defines emerging norms or conventions, as we look at how these are produced and how we engage with them.

Reflecting on what counts as data and how data makes us feel in relation to the urgent challenges of our time, the works in the exhibition explore climate change, location data and data legacies. This curatorial process has involved many contributors. Our collaborators Amanda Hayman and Troy Casey of Blaklash Creative have highlighted the use of data in the work of contemporary Australian Indigenous artists, whether in activist interrogations of Australian archives and histories, or within the foregrounding of Indigenous knowledge in and of itself, or as integral to the critique of conventions. The increasing collection, mining, and monetisation of information has changed how people perceive and relate to online data. Large datasets, colloquially known as Big Data, are often characterised by the three Vs: volume, variety and velocity, with some commentators also referring to veracity.1 Big Data’s scale and volume means it is often decontextualized and perceived as abstract, making it difficult to comprehend the ways in which it is entangled in our daily lives, as it is rarely explored in an affective sense. Show more