Datapoiesis: Transparency in the poetic data performance

Abstract

The paper focuses on artistic practices that highlight the degree of transparency generated by the data processing around us. In particular the paper takes into account the project Data-poiesis by the Italian artistic duo The Art is Open Source. The starting point of the project is that Data are constantly extracted from our environment and behaviours and the results of this elaboration are used to make decisions, personalize services and interfaces and to steer the ways in which things happen. This process is not always transparent and accessible. Thus, the main aim of DataPoiesis is to create artistic and technical objects that allow participants to perceive sensually the nature of data. For instance "OBIETTIVO" is a lighting sculpture connected through an artificial intelligence to the data produced by international organizations about the number of people living in conditions of extreme poverty. Whenever a certain figure changes, the sculpture gives off luminous pulsations, allowing the user to have a visual perception of a numerical entity as large as that of world poverty. The artwork has the ability to transfer a material form to otherwise intangible numerical entities. At the same time, it questions the tendency to perceive information as something dominant over the material world, rather than as a cultural and existential condition which dives deep into human perception.