In Photos: The Big Bang Data exhibition at the ArtScience Museum
Big Bang Data is the newest exhibition at the ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands, and it invites us to look more closely at the world of data and it’s relation to our lives. We take you through some highlights in pictures.
The exhibition opens with a literal wall of data. Called Data:Tron, by Ryoki Ikeda, the piece uses pure data as a source for sound and visuals. Presented in a room that is otherwise completely in the dark, it’s quite an intense experience to say the least.
The first section is called “Understanding the Cloud”, and it starts with an audio-visual projection called Internet Machine by Timo Arnall (Co-produced by CCCB and Fundación Telefónica and filmed at Telefónica Alcalá Data Center) that takes you into a data center. This is projected almost life-size so you feel like you’re really right there.
From there, the next room is all about illustrating how the Cloud is physically formed, starting with a large map of the world showing all the undersea cables that carry the electrical pulses we know as data in the global internet network. (Telegeography: Markus Krisetya, Larry Lairson, Alan Mauldin, Submarine Cable Map.)
Are you old enough to remember a time before the internet? If so, then you’ll probably recognize some of the media displayed in Data Storage Devices (by CCCB Production).
Compare that to a proposed storage medium of the future – blood. Our own blood can apparently store 739kB/g, so it’ll be interesting (and slightly morbid) to see if we really develop a way to store information in it.
Moving on, we were greeted by three colorful panels mounted on the wall. Titled Cinema Redux, this piece by Brendan Dawes saw three movies processed to generate a 8x6 pixel image for every second of the film. Placed together, the three resulting pieces quantitatively shows each director’s style through overall tonal color and light.
Here’s a close-up of one piece, which is the film Vertigo (1958). Note how every single frame can still be made out when you go up close, so you can almost “watch” the whole film again.
World Processor by Ingo Gunther is another interesting piece. With this one, the artist creates globes that visually translate information on political, economic, geographical, social, technological and even environmental issues.
For example, this globe illustrates countries by placing their size relative to the number of patents they hold, with their ranking in the World Education Index shown in red next to their name. As you can see Taiwan has a fairly large number of patents even though it’s ranked just 100 in the index.
Next up was the piece Black shoals; Dark matter by Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway. This piece represents the stock market as a galaxy, with companies as stars that flicker and glow. The brightness and duration are real-time representations of the trading activity and the stars will drift in response to the movements of the market, eventually forming constellations.
There’s a flat screen next to the piece that you can use to “navigate” the galaxy, zooming in to see the names of the individual companies and giving you a better idea of their groupings.
We all know by now that there’s an explosion of images out there, but have you ever wondered about the exact scale of image-sharing? 24 Hrs in Photos by Erik Kessels shows you exactly that by printing all the images shared on Flickr over a 24-hour period in 2011 and stacking them in a large room.
It’s surprising to see the variety of images and the sheer number of them shared in just one day. Each image was printed to about 8R size, but that’s still a lot of pictures given the pile goes easily above the height of an adult person.
The exhibition then moved towards the theme of how we are data ourselves, with our activity on social networks easily becoming one of the largest forms of data production today, with pieces like Hello World! Or: How I Learned to Stop Listening by Christopher Baker.
The theme was taken further by Heather Dewey-Hagborg, who created a series of sculptured human faces based on DNA she obtained from everyday objects left behind in public places with her piece Stranger Visions.
It’s crazy to think you can possibly recreate the likeliness of someone based on a single cigarette, but’s perhaps exactly what is meant by “we are data”; as long as someone can get hold of enough of our data – even our very likeliness can be recreated!
Perhaps with that in mind, Face Cages by Zach Blas presents three face masks that, when worn will obscure just enough of your face to prevent successful facial recognition.
At the very end of the exhibition you come to large room with strings tied across. Cards and marker pens are provided so you can pen down your own interpretation of what data is to you. If you’re interested to visit the exhibition, tickets cost $15 for adults and $9 for children. Discounted rates are available so do check out the website for more.
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