Berlin_Lokal_Zeit

Berlin_Lokal_Zeit

Berlin_Lokal_Zeit

BERLIN_LOKAL_ZEIT is a participatory project that aims to capture and jointly reflect on experiences of everyday life in the city during the pandemic. Which phenomena appear, how do they change and how do our attitudes towards them change over time?

30 participants documented and processed the many small changes that have taken place since the beginning of the pandemic in images, text, and audiorecordings. Using CLB Berlin Moritzplatz as a hub, artistic works and performances explore the experiential space of the city.

With: Kim Albrecht | Sam Auinger | Ingrid Beirer | Peter Cusack | Eliot Felde | Maren Hartmann | Martina Huber | Almut Hüfler | Susanne Jaschko | Max Joy | katrinem | Udo Noll | Dietmar Offenhuber | Nika Radić | Ursula Rogg | Sven Sappelt | Holger Schulze | Paul Scraton | Georg Spehr | Zoe Spehr | Hannes Strobl | Linh Hoang Thuy

Link to the Project website

Foto by Nika Radić

What we talk about when we talk about data physicality

What we talk about when we talk about data physicality

What we talk about when we talk about data physicality

Best Paper Award IEEE CG&A

For the IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications journal special issue on data physicalization, I wrote a paper on data materiality, especially focused on which concepts of data are mobilized in the data physicalization discourse and practice. 

Data physicalizations “map data to physical form,” yet many canonical examples are not based on data sets. To address this contradiction, I argue that the practice of physicalization forces us to rethink traditional notions of data. This paper proposes a conceptual framework to examine how physicalizations relate to data. This paper develops a two-dimensional conceptual space for comparing different perspectives on data used in physicalization, drawing from design theory and critical data studies literature. One axis distinguishes between epistemological and ontological perspectives, focusing on the relationship between data and the mind. The second axis distinguishes how data relate to the world, differentiating between representational and relational perspectives. To clarify the aesthetic and conceptual implications of these different perspectives, the paper discusses examples of data physicalization for each quadrant of the continuous space. It further uses the framework to examine the explicit and implicit assumptions about data in physicalization literature. As a theoretical paper, it encourages practitioners to think about how data relate to the manifestations and the phenomena they try to capture. It invites exploration of the relationship between data and the world as a generative source of creative tension.

The paper can currently be accessed as a pre-print on the arxiv server 

The Inscriptome: virus as a visual instrument

The Inscriptome: virus as a visual instrument

The Inscriptome: virus as a visual instrument

In this piece for the (now defunct) Strelka Magazine, Orkan Telhan and I looked at the cultural and historical context of viruses and their vaccines as media of inscription. Based on the model of 19th century arm-to-arm vaccination, we look at how the governance of viral inscriptions is a delicate balancing act.

The virus inscribes itself onto the body, but how does it inscribe itself onto the city and the world at large? A new inscription system based on material proxies, bioindicators, and metagenomic signatures allows us to see viruses as recording agents and better understand which spaces they conquer, which species they traverse, and what can stop them.

Link to the archived text

Image: Color plate by Francisco Javier de Balmis shows smallpox vaccination scars. Courtesy of Welcome Library