Jamie Allen, artist and Head of Research at CIID (the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design), discusses the relationship between technology, data, truth and representation. His projects deal with the material of media and its infrastructure (http://heavyside.net).
Abstract:
Technologies which manipulate data compose a new media, a new technical image, that is no longer a photograph of some presumed real, but an infinitely inferential and interpretable rendering of supposedly "raw knowledge" from a highly distributed network of spinning platters of silicon. As spheres of representation expand to include the psychic and biological interiorities of our lives, we increasingly see ourselves reflected in this data, not even as others see us, but as machines of collection and interpretation do. Claims of beauty and truth telling that the data body bring forth are not new: these are always the claims made by the apostles of any new media. There is not more truth in data than there is elsewhere, only newly warped reflections. As we examine the data from the mount on our new digital tablets, we are best to ask how this data reflects, rather that what new truth it holds.
Technologies which manipulate data compose a new media, a new technical image, that is no longer a photograph of some presumed real, but an infinitely inferential and interpretable rendering of supposedly "raw knowledge" from a highly distributed network of spinning platters of silicon. As spheres of representation expand to include the psychic and biological interiorities of our lives, we increasingly see ourselves reflected in this data, not even as others see us, but as machines of collection and interpretation do. Claims of beauty and truth telling that the data body bring forth are not new: these are always the claims made by the apostles of any new media. There is not more truth in data than there is elsewhere, only newly warped reflections. As we examine the data from the mount on our new digital tablets, we are best to ask how this data reflects, rather that what new truth it holds.
MLibrary Emergent Research events are aimed at better understanding the various types of research undertaken across campus, particularly as they relate to library services and support, opportunities for collaboration, data management and preservation, and beyond.
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