About
After an exhibition at the Open Data Institute in London, and at the FutureEverything festival in Manchester, we are bringing a selection of the works to Lighthouse, as well as hosting two accompanying events.
The Data as Culture programme explores the wider implications of the culture of open data on culture itself, to challenge our understanding of what data is, and how it may affect and reflect our lives. This commission explores our relationship with surveillance, privacy, and personal data, taking a critical and sometimes comedic look at the power of open data.
Data as Culture is for everyone. We want to ensure conversations about open data expand beyond specialist communities and through to the general public. Using data as a material increases awareness of what data is, how it can be used creatively, how it can inspire, encourage play and lateral thinking, and help people share stories and experiences.
As Shiri Shalmy, the exhibition's curator, says:
'The question of ownership over data, personal and public, is understood as a question of authority. It is this tension between secret agents and personal agency that the exhibition attempts to explore. Gaining access, authorised or otherwise, to the devices and networks that are used to record, measure and order the world, the artists employ a range of strategies to expose and share data, while interrogating the accessibility of the gathered information and the potential for claiming it back as public knowledge. Works in the exhibition move between the direct and the poetic, the representational to the abstract, attempting to visualise the invisible, interrogate the impenetrable, and give human scale to the monstrous volume of information.'
Dates: 21 June 20 July 2014
Times: 11am 6pm
Venue: Lighthouse, 28 Kensington Street
Private View: 20 June
Data as Culture is a co-commission with the Open Data Institute and FutureEverything.
