Data Art and Patterns

My process begins with the search for intriguing human data, which I then mine for patterns and outliers that excite my aesthetic sensibilities. Using generative software, I transform the chosen data into visuals, setting up subtle parameters, layers, and trajectories that serve my conceptual goals. Once my algorithms are applied the data take charge of the animation, color choices, camera angles, perspectives, and more. As the artist I choose the conceptual play, but the data are the actors freely interpreting and performing. The art prints cut from my videos capture catalytic instances; they are meant to stimulate curiosity about the action that created them. 

Roland Barthes, a French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist, critic, and semiotician- what is an image?  Barthes says, referring to photography, that the language of the image is not merely the totality of utterances emitted, it is also the totality of utterances received.  The patterns that emerge from my videos are placed there by the data and to a lesser extent programming, but the artwork would be incomplete were it not for the patterns created by the viewers.  This is an augmentation of ‘what is received’ as it is an additional layer of art created by the viewer’s patterns. 

The human brain is hardwired to find patterns and meaning in all things, and my artwork communicates directly to those instincts. Though we are viewing the same underlying data and the truths it contains, we will each find patterns that reflect our own interests and experiences.  In addition, my patented algorithms find patterns in the data that are not discoverable by humans, and these data arrangements are also used in the artwork. 

In my artwork, one can see that the data and their sources are important.  Using a collector’s own data, I create animations of the patterns in these data, revealing outliers that do not fit existing forms, and then I expose larger patterns that incorporate these anomalies.  Viewers instinctively find their own patterns in this data-driven art, comparing and contrasting what they know about the source against their own interpretations of the abstract imagery.  Viewers of this artwork also create their own outliers, which lead to new patterns, and thereby create new ways to enlarge their own view of themselves and others. 

Human search for order:  In the modern world that seems so disordered we humans are always driven to reach for order.  This theme plays heavily in my artwork as I go from order to chaos and sometimes back to order.  One of the problems I see with our being hard-wired for story is the patterns that we make in order to understand our world are also the very patterns that bind us to a limited way of seeing it. I am exploring ways for my art to bring in the outlier data that do not fit the patterns. These data can be part of new patterns, new ways of understanding our world.