PRIVATE BITS - personal data exposed

NETFILMMAKERS, online gallery for NetArt and NetVideo, presents PRIVATE BITS - personal data exposed , a new exhibition focusing on data visualization. The curator is CARL EMIL CARLSEN who works with interactive audiovisual systems as a designer, artist and teacher.

PRIVATE BITS:
The data cloud is growing at higher rates everyday. It can be regarded as a new kind of shared long term memory for humanity, relying on networked databases hidden in cooled basements. We strap on digital goggles in the shape of search engines and pick out particles of interest from the cloud. Fascinated by the new possibilities we tend to forget that the goggles we wear only provide a narrow angle of view and in effect function like horse blinds. Behind us sits the coachman in the shape of corporate directors, pulling our heads in the direction of the highest bidder - or in best case, in the direction it is assumed we want to look.

In order to get our own perspective on the data cloud, we must acquire the skill to construct our own digital optics. This skill is called data visualization and it can be used to crystallize areas of the cloud into concrete form, visible to the eye.

With the theme Private Bits the artists of this season at netfilmmakers are asked to explore themselves through data visualization. Instead of trying to construct a macro scope to grasp the totality of the cloud, they will build microscopes and zoom in on the patterns in their own lives. Through free experimentation with personal data they will hopefully make findings that illuminate otherwise invisible habits. What findings they choose to share and how they chose to present them is completely up to them.
The invited artists are Field (Marcus Wendt & Vera-Maria Glahn) from Germany, Tim Knapen from Belgium and Peter Koraca from Slovenia, who all work in the borderline between art and interaction design.
TEXT BY CARL EMIL CARLSEN

PRIVATE BITS - personal data exposed
Netfilmmakers 20.th edition
MUSE by Vera-Maria Glahn & Marcus Wendt/Field (DE)
WHOLE MONTH CATALOG by Tim Knapen (BE)
THINKING by Peter Koraca (SI)
13.05.-08.08.2010

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