I can't actually see anybody out there I
was so excited when Trevor asked me to
come to this event and to put together a
group of artists to talk to you if you
look to the right of you right now or to
the left of you at the person sitting
next to you they may indeed be an artist
we are among you
as we speak my my art practice involves
data and in those most specifically the
human experience of data and and I think
a lot about what is it like for for the
everyday person to be in this new world
of data and and and maybe because this
is a maybe a biased model because I do a
lot of traveling but I think about the
air traffic system as an analogy so the
air traffic system when when you're in
it and you're traveling is a system of
almost unimaginable complexity and we
only see it in small glimpses we see our
bags disappearing down these strange
runways and we see the fueling systems
come in and connect to the plane as we
run on the runway but we don't really
get a feeling of the whole of it you
know I was surprised to find out when we
were working on this project that at any
given time there are more than a million
people in the air and what you're seeing
here is you're seeing this almost
respiring system of planes landing and
taking off on 15-minute intervals
throughout the day now the second thing
that I think about when I think about
the air traffic system is they think
about this loss of control it's one of
the only times in our lives that we
voluntarily give up our control we're
putting these lineups in and we really
do what we are told for a short period
of time and I think that our everyday
experience with data maybe is similar to
this we are engaging with a very
complicated system and we're doing so
very much out of our own control and I'm
not the first artist to think about this
David Foster Wallace merican novelist
wrote a book called Infinite Jest
Infinite Jest is it very interesting
novel it is it's full of footnotes
occasionally those footnotes have
footnotes and and even sometimes those
footnotes of the footnotes have
footnotes and when he was asked by his
editor why he was including this he
responded that he said he wanted to
mimic the information flood and data
triage that he expected to be an even
bigger part of life 15 years hence and I
think that this idea is something that
we are all all of us in this room
wrestling with now this need in this
this desire for data triage my own work
in it involves quite quite a focus on on
how information is used in ways that we
may not be aware of this is a piece that
I did a number of years ago called just
landed and what I'm doing and just
landed is I'm looking at tweets that you
probably have seen if you're on Twitter
of people saying I just landed in Hawaii
or I just landed in London in these kind
of rich person vanity tweets and I
thought we could take these these vanity
tweets and maybe make some utility out
of it by using it to a to create a model
of human travel and and this piece has a
companion called good morning which is
just that it's everybody on Twitter
saying good morning so here the people
who are represented by green blocks
those are people who get up quite early
the people who are red blocks are
getting up much later as we sweep
through North America you see lots of
red blocks on the west coast
so as as Trevor mentioned I worked at
the New York Times for two and a half
years as the data artist-in-residence
some of you are asking this question so
I'll answer it I made up that title
myself and and at the Times we took some
of these ideas and we tried to make them
into something a little bit more
practical and we built this project
called cascade and cascade is a project
that looks at how people are sharing
times content over the Internet so on
the bottom left-hand side is the first
tweet about this particular story and
what we're seeing is one conversation
that surrounds that story so very much I
was interested in how we couldn't we
take something that is invisible that is
inherently invisible and make it into
something make it into an architectural
form that we can then think with that we
can engage with and that we can
understand when I left the Times in
January I started a company called the
office for creative research and with
the office for creative research we're
very interested in in changing the way
people think about data and changing the
way that people experience data and one
of the ways that we do that is by
bringing data into public space this is
a piece that we installed it's a
permanent installation at the university
of texas call them that's the way it is
this is five stories tall and a hundred
and forty feet wide it runs every night
and what it does is it does these
linguistic data games with the content
of the news broadcast from every single
day so this is a broadcast from last
summer there were floods or droughts in
Colorado so we see withering corn the
droughts dry earth hungry cattle the
worst and and as people are standing in
front of this building they're receiving
a much different experience of data than
the experience that they're used to and
because what we're actually trying to do
is we're trying to change the
conversation around data is the
conversation around data as it sits
right now involves involves a lot of
terms like this this is essentially if
you had to distill what I'm trying to do
with my work is I'm trying to provide a
counterbalance to this this is a phrase
that I've heard over and over and over
again the people that are saying it I
think they're thinking about this
okay but uh but III well I'm I'm
thinking about this as well but in a
context of this in our experience with
oil is not a particularly good one and
the idea of data being the new oil may
in fact be the case but not in the
context that I think the current
conversation is is is focusing it so
what I was excited about with the
opportunity here at navigate was to
bring some artists that will help us
think about our conversation around data
in privacy in different ways and so I I
rammed it up three of who artists who I
think are probably the best possible
choices that I could have I could have
made and I was thrilled that they all
said yes so we have three artists who
are gonna be working in very different
areas I'm not gonna take a lot of time
to explain their practice because I'm
gonna leave it to them but we have Kyle
McDonald whose work largely surrounds
this concept of how do we how do we see
and how are we seeing the act of seeing
and the act of being seen we have Lauren
McCarthy who you're gonna see in just a
second whose work involves human
interactions and how our human
interactions are changing and finally we
have Heather do we have Berg who's gonna
take us into I think the future of
privacy issues by thinking about very
deeply about about topics like DNA so I
invited these artists here they all said
yes there are a couple of reasons I
think they said yes but one of the
primary ones besides legal
representation I think a lot of them are
looking for legal representation you'll
find out why when you see them talk I
think most of them and myself included
are primarily excited about the
conversations that we can have today so
after we're off the stage please feel
free to come up and talk to us because
that's really why we're here to advance
the conversation and to advance the
dialogue so I hope you enjoy what we
have are going to bring to the event and
I look forward to talking to all of you
thanks