Abstract
This commentary is a reflection on a collaboration with the artist Rossella Biscotti and comments on how artistic research and logico-mathematical methods can be used to contribute to the development of critical perspectives on contemporary data practices.
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Notes
“The enthusiasm for numerical data is reflected by the US census. (…) Printing numbers was a surface effect. Behind, it lays new technologies for classifying and enumerating and new bureaucracies with the authority and continuity to deploy the technology. (…) Categories had to be invented into which people could conveniently fall in order to be counted. (…) Statistical laws that look like brute, irreducible facts were first found in human affairs, but they could be noticed only after social phenomena had been enumerated, tabulated, and made public.” (Hacking 1990: 2–3).
In a lecture given at the 2012 summer school on “Images and Visualisation: Imaging Technology, Truth and Trust”, in Norrköping, Sweden, Anne Beaulieu makes a similar point with respect to how artists in residence can force other kinds of discussions and challenge existing conventions within information visualisation.
References
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This commentary is an extended version of blog posts previously published on www.logicandinformation.be and www.oii.ox.ac.uk/blog/tag/logivis/
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Allo, P. The Meaning of ‘Other’ in Classifications: Formal Methods Meet Artistic Research. Philos. Technol. 30, 541–545 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-017-0272-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-017-0272-4