Living Data: Evolving Conversations. Exhibition and Forum at the University of Technology Sydney, 2014. Curators: Lisa Roberts and Anita Marosszeky. Living Data
Big data. You collect it, you store it, you analyze it, but then what? Many marketers struggle to turn the raw material that is data into valuable, actionable, even inspiring insight. How do you transform mere numbers into a strategic vision?
Today we take a step outside of the world of B2B tech, and take inspiration from The Living Data program, a dynamic intersection of art and science in which data is an artistic armature for story-telling, generating sensory experience, and deepening the understanding of a subject.
Living data: how art helps us all understand climate change
By Lisa Roberts, University of Technology, Sydney
We hear so much about the integrity of scientific process and the role of data in driving action on climate change – but what role is there for artists in bringing about changes in understandings?
Science and the arts are often polarised as incompatible ways of understanding the world. That’s not necessarily true – and what brings them together is creativity and curiosity.
Creativity is at the heart of art and science and passion drives both as ways of satisfying curiosity and expressing new findings. Science builds a world-view based on currently known facts. Art expresses personal understanding and experience. When a scientific view aligns with lived experience, iconography and story may lead us usefully towards a sustainable future.
The need to understand climate change is urgent. For some people, the facts about climate change don’t matter – so we need experiences that stir strong feelings of connection. Artists are leading the way to reconnect methods of analysis and expression in this way. The Living Data program that I lead is one of several initiatives to bring together scientists and artists.
The creative challenge we face is to accurately express the changes happening to natural systems in ways that resonate with feelings of connection. It is not enough to know the science. People process information in different ways, from the mechanistic to the sensory, from Skeptical Science to Green Porn. For that reason, we need to make icons which have a dual resonance, that speak to the mechanistic and the sensory.
2012 iteration of Oceanic Living Data, an animated installation that evolves, like a scientific model, to reflect current knowledge of the global ecosystem. Living Data/Lisa Roberts
The programs are led by people with knowledge and concern about how the natural world is changing and the desire to respond most usefully.
How Living Data works
We link up to share data, iconography and stories to expand our reach beyond our labs and studios. We present online, in conferences, exhibitions, public spaces, and academic, mainstream and social media. As scientist Kirralee Baker notes, “it’s not about the story teller but the story to be told”.
My role in driving action on climate change is as an artist. My inspiration comes from dance, from my experience of Antarctica – and from 12 years of working with scientists and other artists whose concern is climate change.
A methodology that uses drawing and dance as tools of enquiry is a radical idea for those accustomed to the conventions of the scientific method. But when choreographic analysis is embedded within scientific research, pattern recognition can contribute to some startling discoveries.
Previously unseen behaviour in Antarctic krill is revealed through the patterns in mating dances. As are rhythmic cycles of Antarctic sea ice and the relationship between water temperature and the abundance of marine algae.
My practice is animation and my approach is collaborative. In the Living Data program scientists and artists share data, iconography and methodology, to develop new ways of understanding and expressing changes in natural systems. Dance and drawing are tools that help me generate animations that combine the primal forms of circling, spiralling and crossing that I recognise in scientific data and subjective responses.
Iconography developed through art of many forms can embody sensory connection to scientific data. Scientists and artists involved in Living Data conversations develop new material for presentation and publication.
Phytoplankton Micro Installation. Collaborators: Sue Fenech and Anita Marosszeky. Living Data
Physical and online presentations, peer reviews and comments make sure shared material is used ethically and lets everyone see how collaborations evolve and have impacts.
Working together
This practice exemplifies the shift towards collective knowledge production that is essential to advance understanding of climate change.
My work is guided by biological and Indigenous methodologies that acknowledge how the natural world works and is maintained. The story I present does not belong to me or even to the association of research participants. Guided by Indigenous Canadian scholar Shawn Wilson I recognise the story as part of the relationships that exist between us and the natural world.
I recognise iconography we use in art, science and systems of belief as primal forms of connection that are available to everyone.
In Australia I’ve observed that we – as scientists and artists – tend to express climate change knowledge more quietly in recent years, than do our international colleagues. In our current political climate it is vital that we continue to create and present a global conversation through strong works of pathos, beauty, mystery, wit, pragmatism, human interference, techno wizardry, timeless rhythms and grand symphonic form.
The mix of expressions is vital to inspire and energise new generations of artists and scientists – and to better understand our changing planet.
Read other articles in our creativity series here.
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.
