Introduction

The theme of the SIGGRAPH 2016 Art Gallery is “data materialities,” which centers on the premise that we are surrounded daily by networks, information, and data. Data sources range from public to private profiles, wired to wireless networks, and social and mediated realities. Whether the signals consist of radio frequencies or physical, wired connections, networks are always around us, permeating and consuming our offices, homes, schools, and public indoor and outdoor spaces. Their various incarnations include social networks, transportation and sustenance networks, and networks that enable the distribution of electricity, data, water, and more. As Dr. Anna Nagurney explains in “Networks—The Science-Spanning Disciplines,” network complexity is entrenched in the concept of layered “super networks” comprising multiple networks layered on top of each other to complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Nagurney ultimately describes networks as interpersonal technologies that simply connect people to each other: “Networks have served many purposes but their main goal is: Connecting humans to one another and their activities” [1].

The SIGGRAPH 2016 Art Gallery begins from this premise and goes further to expose the plethora of data we encounter daily by transforming it into tangible incarnations that not only showcase its complexity, but also allow us to relate to it on a human scale. Whether by injecting humor into the portrayal or kinetic energy into the exposition, the goal of the Art Gallery is to shed light on these data platforms and showcase them on a grand scale, in order to make the audience more aware of the data they carry with them daily (and presumably keep private). Visitors will not only be able to experience these data flows, they will also be able to interact with them through both their presence and unique preferences.

Works in the exhibition range from software simulations to large-scale interactive installations that fully engage with audience members, from providing visceral encounters to revealing unexpected connections. From Squidsoup’s enveloping LED cube space of Submergence, which transports visitors into an immersive datascape, to Tine Bech’s playful social media swing sets in The Kinetic Storyteller, the range and scope of information being generated and consumed is both varied and divergent. Mogens Jacobsen’s Crime Scene displays two computers in the act of swapping copyrighted material, highlighting the component of illegality by surrounding them with yellow police tape. Benjamin Grosser’s Facebook Demetricator alerts us to the numbers that consume and rank our daily lives on social media sites by removing them from these environments and allowing us to enjoy our social relationships in virtual space as we would in physical space. Deqing Sun and Peiqi Su's Plinko Poetry plays with the abundance of data traveling through social networks like Twitter by giving visitors a chance to remix this data into poetry, which is randomly generated by dropping a Plinko token onto a game board. THÉORIZ Studio’s Doors invites people to change their perspective of a virtual landscape simply by moving their bodies through space and peering inward.

Doors. (© 2015 THÉORIZ Studio, David-Alexandre Chanel and Romain Constant)

The works in the Art Gallery fit into three distinct categories: 1) Social Media, 2) Data from Natural Sources, and 3) Simulations. Although they are all very different, they share the theme of managing and representing data in novel or unexpected ways, manifesting data and the natural world on both massive and human scales. Works in the Social Media category, including Crime Scene, The Kinetic Storyteller, Plinko Poetry, and Facebook Demetricator, connect visitors’ actions to social media streams; they mine data from the audience and from across the internet in real time and remix it live in public space. The second category, Data from Natural Sources, includes Metaphase Sound Machine and Submergence, works that tap into the live data streams that surround us from the earth and from man-made objects. Finally, the category of Simulations explores how data can be envisioned very differently from how their original creators envisioned them. Works in this category include Doors, Grafikdemo, Pixelbots, and Flower. Overall, the works selected for the 2016 Art Gallery speak...