Art + Data Club, 2021-2023
Description:
Art + Data Club was a monthly Zoom gathering open to artists, curators, data nerds, and anyone interested in sharing or learning more about contemporary art and data practices. The gathering was initiated in July 2021 by myself and Cobi Krieger as an ancillary, educational component to the Los Angeles Artist Census. Over two years, the “club” evolved into a non-hierarchical social group that organized and shared their own art, research, and news related to art and data, as well as discussed the work of others.
Meeting archive:
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June 2021
Introduction
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July 2021
Nicolas Grenier
I will talk about "Mapping Exercise", a participative project where I asked museum and gallery goers to fill out a questionnaire about existential questions. The goal was to try to concretize, however modestly, the structure within which we consider big picture questions about the future of humanity. Results published at pluralism.xyz
christy roberts berkowitz
I'm interested in how we gather data and what kinds of questions confuse or complicate machine learning. I'm currently using Proust's Questionnaire as a template for "unclassifiable data", or data that complicates unsupervised machine learning. I am currently using machine learning models to create GAN visualizations of this "unclassifiable data". My next step is to develop forms for the data, and eventually functions for the VR space. The project's end goal is to offer "data-driven" functional avatars for the VR space. The project is entitled, "Humavatar".
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September 2021
Danielle Trent
I create abstract soft sculpture ‘creatures' that are data visualizations representing the inequalities in K-12 Los Angeles public school districts' student demographics and funding.
Cedric Tai
The messiest data-based projects I've done as inspired by archives / pedagogy / disability justice and how it's not just when a tool is broken, but also when it's mis-used / hybridized that its 'potential' and 'use' become material / visible / up for discussion.
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September 2021
Event: Other Places art fair (OPaf)
We are exploring ways to make data collection more accessible, tangible, personal and relational. Members of the Art + Data Club are invited to contribute an object that becomes a carrier of data. We are seeking objects created to collect data through physical mark making from visitors to the fair.
You can collect any kind of data you like through this exercise. Think about what kind of data is interesting to you, and how you will communicate these questions on your object. This is inspired by Nicolas Grenier’s Pluralism project and christy roberts berkowitz’s HUMAVATAR project, presented at Art + Data Club in July.
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October 2021
Eric Andrew Carter
The work I will be sharing explores the differences between big data (aggregated, discreet, impersonal) and small data (disaggregated, indiscreet, personal). In these works I show how psychological evaluations can both reveal and obscure the subject’s personhood.
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November 2021
Andrea “Angie” Chandler
Angie Chandler is a Southern California based writer, curator and the Creative Strategist behind Culture Mapping: San Diego. Culture Mapping: San Diego is a data & relationship driven initiative to increase access and visibility for historically excluded artists and arts orgs in San Diego County. When not consulting, she is the Audience and Engagement Specialist at Balboa Art Conservation Center.
Reading: Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System, by Donella Meadows (recommended by christy roberts berkowitz)
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January 2022
Housekeeping: Lots of ideas have been brought up to me about things we can include in our monthly gatherings. This month lets review our meeting structure for Art + Data Club and talk about what else we'd like to do collectively, and who wants to play what role. - Tatiana
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February 2022
Ahree Lee
I'd like to share two projects: 1/ "Me," the first Internet time-lapse self-portrait video, which went viral in 2006 and touched off the global self-portrait video meme. I'm currently updating it to release the 20-year version in November, and re-framing the cultural context around it. 2/ Three data weavings from "Pattern : Code," a body of work that reactivates the innate connections between weaving and computing, and examines the interrelationships between technology, craft, and women’s labor.
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March 2022
Nicolas Grenier
"In 20 Years" is an experimental survey that took place during my last exhibition at gallery Luis De Jesus Los Angeles. (It is a new iteration of the project I presented last year.) Visitors were asked to complete a questionnaire about issues such as whether they believe in intergenerational justice, if they can imagine a post-capitalist new order, and how they perceive their role in building the future. Overall "In 20 years" is a work about how we ask and think about big-picture questions, and about the role that data and the broader concept of "measurement" can play in relation to existential issues for our society.
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April 2022
Michael Rippens
Is story-sharing a form of data collection? Can individual anecdotes and opinions fill in gaps between quantifiable stats & figures to paint a more holistic—perhaps more human—picture? I’d like to share a couple of my projects that use data in the more traditional sense, and a few others that invite participants to contribute their personal thoughts and stories, arguably resulting in a collection of unquantified soft data.
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May 2022
Elizabeth Withstandley
I'd like to share a few projects in which I used data that I collected to create narratives and expereinces. The first work was started in 2011 and the most recent was completed in 2020. In all 3 works I used websites that were created specifically for the projects to gather information from very specific groups of people. I'll share the websites and process in which I created the works in addition to the final result.
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June 2022
Centre for Arts Workers, presented by Laurel Newnham and Remelisa Cullitan
I would like to share a database project of arts jobs and skill requests as a futures archive/data tool for artists to find information in a large yet detailed way. This project is informed by community conversations around work in the arts, lack of resources/equity in finding work as artists, and a desire to create thriving environments of care for our communty members (as The Centre for Arts Workers).
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August 2022
Housekeeping: Lets talk about the exhibition proposal + Other Places art fair -Tatiana
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September 2022
Event: Other Places art fair
This year, we’ll be at LA Artist Census’s booth promoting Art + Data Club using paper email sign up sheets that mimic two-step verification digital security measures (its hilarious!). We’ll also give fair goers an option to “opt-in to cookies” with a variety of baked cookies available for them to choose from. Conceptualized in an Art + Data Club meeting with Cedric Tai, Michael Rippens, and Tatiana Vahan, the booth will be managed by Cedric, Michael, and Eric Andrew Carter.
See two-step verification results here.
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November 2022
Tatiana Vahan and Rumpelstiltskin Morgan
An Accessibility Guide to LA Art Spaces is an in-depth practical resource about art spaces in Los Angeles created through research and public outreach organized by me and fellow artist Rumpelstiltskin Morgan. This work emphasizes ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) accessibility, while highlighting the expansion of what accessibility is in diverse social contexts. Emerging from email inquiries about accessibility data to the LA Artist Census by artists Jaklin Romine and Rumpelstiltskin Morgan, we are facilitating conversations with and collecting data about art spaces in response to the needs of the Los Angeles community.
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January 2023
Housekeeping: Since we havent met in some time, this month we’ll have a casual catch up and check in with one another. Please feel free to share any projects, events, exhibitions, and/or work related to art and data that you’re working on or are interested in. I miss you all! And am looking forward to our regular meeting. -Tatiana
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March 2023
This month we’ll play with and chat about Chat GPT, an AI chatbot that can write poems, edit your grant applications, write programing language, answer serious and unserious questions, and much more. For those who have used this technology, this will be a space to share your experiences, and for those who havent, to learn more about it. It would also be fun to play with it collectively and/or individually during our meeting.
There have been numerous articles written about Chat GPT, including this one by Noam Chomsky (NY Times is free with an LA Public Library card, btw) and this one by the musician Nick Cave. There are so many— If there’s one you’d like to share with the group, send me links and I’ll share tomorrow evening for anyone who’d like to read up beforehand.
One last thing, I’ll be in Armenia for the next few months, if anyone would like to take over hosting for a while, please let me know. We can also discuss on Saturday. Otherwise, this will be our last for a while.
Looking forward to seeing you all soon!
Tatiana
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April 2023
No one officially signed up to do a presentation this month, but if you'd like to share a project or present your work, please let me know and I'll add you to the agenda. Otherwise, we'll have a more informal sharing and catch-up session.
We can continue our discussion about AI and Chat GPT from last meeting, and circle back around to planning our Art + Data Club exhibition. There's also chatter about a possible in-person gathering at some point in the next couple months, so perhaps we can nail down some future IRL plans together.
Look forward to seeing you all soon!
Michael
P.S. As most of you know, Tatiana is out of the country for the next few months and I've offered to host our zoom meetings in her absence. But I'm relying on you—our Art + Data Club-munity—to please contribute any topics or items you'd like to discuss at future meetings, as well as sign up to present your work on our Meeting Sign Up doc. Or if you know someone who isn't part of the club (yet) but who should definitely do a presentation, let's reach out and make it happen. Cheers!
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June 2023
Linda Franke
In my presentation I would like to discuss a few questions around software and coincidence that I am currently thinking and writing about and hope to gain some feedback.
For example:
I am wondering if there are qualities about the real world that one can only understand through working in virtual space. Is it possible that virtual space is as a place for much more possibility of a coincidence assuming that coincidences are regular events that can´t be repeated.
What is the difference between imitation and simulation?
What are the reasons to simulate the unknown? Can we come closer to the unknown with software?
What can we learn from a places without physics ?
How does the fact that we are immortal changes our behavior in virtual space?
Nicolas Grenier
Nicolas will introduce us to a project he's currently working on using GPT 4.
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August 2023
Housekeeping: At tomorrow's meeting we'll continue planning our group exhibition. If you'd like to be involved, please drop in to learn more and contribute your ideas. You're also invited to upload an artist bio, project description, etc. to our [Art + Data Club Group Exhibition Google Doc]. Read more about the exhibition and how to participate [here]. - Michael
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September 2023
Nicole Rademacher
My project is a research project seeking to empirically study (to my knowledge for the first time) the struggles of adult adoptees and foster care alumni from their perspective. It will consist of a series of hybrid events where invited guests (who identify as adult adoptees or foster care alumni) will discuss their experience paired with an art-based healing workshop afterward. Attendees who identify as an adopted person or someone who has survived the foster care system are invited to complete a questionnaire to give voice to their experience. The artwork and survey responses will feed into an online multilayered interactive visualization.
I've attached my mock-ups of the online visualization. The mock-ups use the 7 Core Issues in Adoption that were coined in the 80s by a social worker and adoptive mom based on her subjective work in the field and written up in a paper. It also incorporates emotions/experience words from a project I did in 2020 called Being Adopted where I asked self-identified adult adoptees to respond to a form with 3 words to describe their adoption experience. This research grows out of that project.
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October 2023
Housekeeping: Drop in to chat all things art and data. Bring a project, article, or discussion topic to share if you'd like. There's also some exciting news about our proposed Art + Data Club website.