In the last few years we have learnt a lot about the power and perils of data in different fields, from the communication industry to politics and fashion as well. For modern companies (and for political parties as well...) harvesting and owning data means to have invisible assets that can help them with a variety of issues from improving the quality of a product to growing one's business or influencing consumers' (or even voters'...) behaviour.
When we think of data we conjure up in our minds strings of numbers, values and information about web traffic, social media reach, customer reviews and demographics, combinations of the billions of data bytes out there, yet we rarely imagine data as something beautiful.
The beauty of data stands indeed in the fact that, through data, we can collect an incredible amount of information in a relatively short time. But can data have an aesthetic power as well? Can data be beautiful or can they be turned into a visual story? Yes, they can, at least according to Ryoji Ikeda.
The Japanese artist and composer often combines minimal acoustic compositions with fields of digitally rendered information. Algorithms are employed in his practice to capture and reflect the world surrounding us and the results of these data visualizations can be incredibly intriguing.
One of Ikeda's data based works – "data-verse 1" (2019) – is currently on display in the Arsenale section of the 58th International Art Exhibition in Venice. The work - completing an epic cycle of works visualising large quantities of digital information - consists in a large-scale high-definition screen on which scientific data are projected.
Ikeda combined data from CERN, NASA and The Human Genome Project, coming up with mathematical compositions in which the artist mixed raw data with an auditory pattern. The resulting digital artwork invites viewers to consider the difference in scale between small particles such as data and the enormity of the universe, but also the incredible amount of data that can be elaborated in a very short time and the information processed by our brains.
Pixels and noises are used as the building block for this installation that turns data from invisible entities into visible ones, prompting us to consider how these bytes influence our lives.
The electronic music in the background adds another layer to the installation, alluding at other dimensions and reminding us that the universe of data is even more complex than we can imagine.
The data form a complex puzzle of information, almost a poem in digital verses visualised and processed by visitors.
If you want to have a more physical rather than visual interpretation of data, head to the Giardini's Central Pavilion, here you'll find Ikeda's "spectra III" (2008/2019).
The latter consists in a corridor bathed in blinding fluorescent LED lighting tubes. The corridor is so bright that most visitors are forced to shield their eyes or focus on the ground, and that's to replicate the sensation of being immersed in an ocean of data, and being unable to process what we see, as if our senses were completed wiped-out.
Though painful to the eyes, the corridor is also a sublime experience, almost a neutral landscape from a mysterious sci-fi dimension that, with its bliding excess of light, leaves you disorented and almost sick, just like an avalanche of data would do.
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