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Data Relations Exhibition Kit

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Data Relations is a group exhibition by Australian and international artists and collectives that brings together projects and collaborations that confront some of the key issues and challenges of our contemporary data-driven society. Exhibiting artists question how big data and online information exchange impacts our personal as well as wider social relationships. This extends to digital technology, how applications or devices are designed and how this informs how we not only use them but how they change our behaviour. The exhibition includes works shown previously overseas as well as new commissions; these are artworks ACCA has asked the artist to make especially for the exhibition. This exhibition also marks the commencement of ACCA’s new Digital Wing sharing artworks beyond the gallery walls.

Data is often associated with neutrality and objectivity, presented as abstract and anonymous facts. In trying to anticipate trends, data is also situated as a magical means to forecast the future if not create a utopian society. The exhibition re-examines how data is ultimately formed by human-led decisions, by human-made programs and algorithms that cannot escape the hierarchies, biases and existing relationships of their world.

The works presented in Data Relations analytically and poetically reflect on our everyday life, contemporary data economy and techno-dependant relationships in ways that are profound, humorous, poetic and, at times, confronting. 

Whilst not professing answers or alternatives, the works are conversation starters. Artists invite us to question the status of data within contemporary culture, the implications of the expanding data economy, and the social and cultural impact of Artificial Intelligence.

Artists: Zach Blas, Tega Brain & Sam Lavigne, Lauren Lee McCarthy, Machine Listening (Sean Dockray, James Parker and Joel Stern), Mimi Ọnụọha, Winnie Soon; plus Data Relations Summer School

Guest Curator: Miriam Kelly
Coordinating Curator: Shelley McSpedden

  1. Introduction
  2. About the Artists
  3. Key artworks
    1. Mimi Ọnụọha, These networks in our skin, 2021
    2. Winnie Soon, Unerasable Characters II 2020
    3. Lauren Lee McCarthy, LAUREN 2017–ongoing
  4. Support Material
  5. For Teachers


Discussion questions

  • What is data and how is it created?

Examples to consider may be statistical information such as birth date, gender and race; photo identification in airport scans; medical and web history.

  • What are the moral and ethical implications of collecting and interpreting data? 

Consider examples such as advertisers’ use of data from your internet searches, a bot learning social skills from an extremist facebook group, police using patterns to predict criminal behaviour.

How to use this Kit

This exhibition kit has been written by ACCA Education to support learning alongside the ACCA exhibition Data Relations. Three key artists and artworks from the exhibition have been highlighted, with discussion questions to prompt students’ thinking. Primary and secondary activities, mapped to the Victorian and Australian Curriculums, can be found in the For Teachers section. VCE students and teachers can view Support Material for further reading and teaching notes drawn from ACCA’s VCE Programs.

Digital Publication

Link to wall labels

About the artists

Feature Artists


MIMI ỌNỤỌHA
Born 1989,
Lives and works in Brooklyn

Nigerian-American artist Mimi Ọnụọha’s work questions and exposes the contradictory logics of technological progress. Through print, code, data, video, installation, and archival media, Ọnụọha offers new orientations for making sense of the absences that define systems of labor, ecology and relations. 

Mimi Ọnụọha highlights the social relationships and power dynamics behind data collection. Her multimedia practice uses print, code, installation and video to call attention to how those in the margins are abstracted, represented, and missed by sociotechnical systems.

Ọnụọha’s recent solo exhibitions include bitforms gallery (USA) and Forest City Gallery (Canada). Her work has been featured at the Whitney Museum of Art (USA), the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (AUS), Mao Jihong Arts Foundation (China), La Gaitê Lyrique (France), Transmediale Festival (Germany), The Photographers Gallery (UK), and NEON (Greece) among others. Her public art engagements have been supported by Akademie der Kunst (Germany), the Royal College of Art (UK), the Rockefeller Foundation (USA), and Princeton University (USA).


WINNIE SOON
Born 1979, Hong Kong
Live and works in Hong Kong, Denmark and London

Winnie Soon is an artist-researcher who resides in Hong Kong and Denmark. Informed by the cultural, social and political context of technology, Winnie’s work approach spans the fields of artistic practice and software studies, examining the materiality of computational processes that underwrite our experiences and realities in digital culture. 

As an artistic coder, researcher and educator, Soon is interested in the materiality and political ramifications of the computational processes that underpin our experiences within the digital realm. Alert to the growing importance of software in shaping our daily lives and identities, Soon’s work probes the technological and cultural imaginaries of programming.

Her projects and lectures have been presented internationally at museums, art festivals, universities and conferences. Currently, she is Assistant Professor at the Department of Digital Design and Information Studies in Aarhus University (Denmark), teaching Aesthetic Programming and Digital Culture.

 

LAUREN LEE MCCARTHY
Born in 1987, Boston
Lives and works in Los Angeles

Lauren Lee McCarthy (she/they) is an artist examining social relationships in the midst of surveillance, automation, and algorithmic living. The mediums she uses to explore these themes included video, installation, sound, Artificial intelligence, social media and the internet. 

Lauren is also the creator of p5.js, an open-source art and education platform that prioritises access and diversity in learning to code, with over 1.5 million users. She expands on this work in her role on the Board of Directors for the Processing Foundation, whose mission is to serve those who have historically not had access to the fields of technology, code, and art in learning software and visual literacy. Lauren is an Associate Professor at UCLA Design Media Arts. She holds an MFA from UCLA and a BS Computer Science and BS Art and Design from MIT.

 

Key Artworks

Mimi Ọnụọha, These Networks in Our Skins 2021, installation view, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Courtesy the artist. Photograph: Andrew Curtis

Mimi Ọnụọha, These networks in our skin 2021 (installation view, focus artwork visible in background). Photography Andrew Curtis.

High definition single-channel video
5:48 mins (looped)
Writer and director: Mimi Ọnụọha
Producer: Nick Castle
Editors: Nick Castle and Mimi Ọnụọha
Director of photography: Julian Muller
Music and sound design: Mathien
Production designer: Noa Bricklin
Art director: Thor Foss
Gaffer: Chase Shamlian
1st AC: Ahmed Nazim
Key grip: Jessica Papayiannis
Set dresser: Brooke van Hensbergen
Colourist: Daniel Orentlicher
Production assistants: Mia Walker and Elaina Castle
Actors: Naliaka Wakhisi (Woman 1), Mimi Ọnụọha (Woman 2), Joti Desour (Woman 3) and Georgetta Buggs (Woman 4)
Courtesy of the artist

These networks in our skin is a video work with a dreamlike sequence which draws on traditional Igbo cosmology. Igbo is an ethnic group in Nigeria and one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa. The video features four women literally lacing personally significant materials (hair, spices and soil) and messages into data cables, infusing them with their physical presence and values. 

In the face of what Ọnụọha describes as ‘algorithmic violence’ – the devastating impact on and exclusion of whole ‘categories’ of people inflicted by the calculations of automated decision-making systems – she overlays ritual and care to data cables. In rewiring the technical infrastructure that connects and powers the world, the artwork imagines what it might mean to recreate the Internet, starting with care. Through this work Ọnụọha creates a new mythology and hypothetical visions of how techno-social infrastructures might be healed, rewired and refashioned to better reflect and service all people.

“In These Networks In Our Skin, a group of four women are reinserting themselves into the infrastructure of technology and the internet. They’re insisting that the cables that data travels through should be laced with their own values and presences. In doing so, they highlight the fact that the data that we collect, and the technology we create is already laced with cultural values. The question is just, which ones?” Mimi Ọnụọha

Discussion questions

  • What materials do you see in the video?
  • Why do you think the artist is combining technological materials and items like spices, hair and fabrics in this artwork?
  • How connected do you think technology is to culture? Does technology have a culture?
  • Does the internet need healing? When have you witnessed or experienced care online?

View video of artwork here

Winnie Soon, Unerasable Characters I 2022, installation view, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Courtesy the artist. Photograph: Andrew Curtis

Winnie Soon, 'Unerasable Characters II' 2020. Installation view (Focus artwork far wall). Photography Andrew Curtis.

Real-time digital software installation
Technical production: Python, p5.js
Acknowledgements: Dr Fu King-wa, Weiboscope research project

For Unerasable Characters II Soon designed custom software that collates and visualises tweets that have been erased from Weibo on a daily basis, presenting this living archive in a graphic grid format. Each censored text is denoted as an individual character, symbol or emoji within the grid, flashing on the screen for a limited period. The duration that each character is visible for is computed from the actual time the post was live on Weibo before being removed. New real-world data endlessly populates the work, which cycles from a busy cacophony of voices into an increasingly silent and empty space as characters incrementally disappear. 

The work utilise Weiboscope (one of the biggest social media platforms in China, similar to Face Book), a data collection and visualisation project lead by Dr Fu King-wa from The University of Hong Kong. Weiboscope regularly samples timelines of a set of selected Chinese microbloggers who have more than 1,000 followers or whose posts are frequently censored.

For ACCA Soon premiered the complete Unerasable characters series as a trilogy of works which address the chilling scale and effect of state-enacted censorship, enforced through digital infrastructures. The series exposes the precarity of individual expression and the politics of erasure within the context of contemporary digital authoritarianism. 

“I’m interested in metadata, which is data that provides information about other data, but not the content of the data, such as the text or specific image. In the work that I’m showing, the three works pay attention to timestamps. It is important information in a piece to compute the visible time of a censored tweet: when the tweet was posted, and when it was erased.” Winnie Soon 

Discussion questions

  • What technology is the artist using in this artwork?
  • When you view this work online describe your emotions and thoughts and how your experience of the work changes over time.
  • What are some ethical issues explored in this work? 

View the artwork here

Lauren Lee McCarthy, Surrogate 2022, detail, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Courtisy the artist. Photograph: Andrew Curtis

Lauren Lee Mccarthy, LAUREN 2017–ongoing, mixed media installation and performance, Installation view (Focus artwork in digital screen). Photography Andrew Curtis.


Mixed media installation and performance.
Featuring video work: LAUREN testimonials 2017,
Variable dimensions.
Director – LAUREN testimonials: David Leonard
Device fabrication: Nick Rodrigues

In LAUREN, McCarthy inverts machine-human as well as designer-user power dynamics, assuming command as she becomes a human version of Alexa, the smart home intelligence system. The work acts an intimate, humorous, and unnerving stage to explore our growing readiness to relinquish bodily and personal agency to technological monitoring and control. 

McCarthy uses a custom-designed networked device to remotely watch over real-life participants. For up to a week at a time, they regulate conditions within participants’ homes using smart devices. The artist has 24/7 control of networked smart devices in the home such as air conditioning, lights, cameras, microphones, door locks – through to cat water and hair dryer. A constant, benevolent presence, the artist strives to surpass AI’s ability to serve her ‘owners’, using human insight to better understand and anticipate their needs. 

“I attempt to become a human version of Amazon Alexa, a smart home intelligence for people in their own homes… I aim to be better than an AI because I can understand them as a person and anticipate their needs.”  Lauren Lee McCarthy

Discussion questions

  • What colours, shapes and technologies do you see in the video artwork compared the photos of the installations of Lauren?
  • How does the mixed media installation relate to and complement the video work? How does it extend how audiences engage with the video?
  • How does the artwork explore and challenge power dynamics of our contemporary society?

View artwork online 

For Teachers

Primary activities

Creating patterns and rhythms 

This activity draws upon the censored voices in Soons work ‘’Unerasable characters II’’ in which symbols, emojis and text from Weibo have been erased.

This activity explores the concept of erasure and censorship, similar to erasure poetry. Students will get a sense of how it feels to cover certain sections of their drawing and how this changes the meaning of the words to create a whole new interpretation. During this activity students explore the themes of technology and erasure in a tactile way with materials which fosters a greater understanding of S.T.E.M through pattern, rhythm, sound, colour and collage.

This exhibition has many embedded S.T.EM links through its direct link to technology. The activity itself directly links mathematics through its use of pattern and repetition. If you choose to extend the activity to incorporate ‘Talking point recorders’ it will also explore technology, communication, repetition and listening.

  • In this activity students use an A4 sheet of newsprint paper as the base upon which they obscure the text and images with their choice of coloured stickers, coloured hole punched shapes, tape and textas. 
  • Students can also use a child safe scalpel to delicately cut out sections. 
  • Students can cover specific words with the intention to create a pattern of shapes or colour in their artworks. 
  • Once works are almost complete, select a piece of coloured background paper to contrast and highlight the removed sections of their drawings. This also creates a bold frame for the artwork to sit upon, strengthening the paper.

Extension:

Reflect on your feelings while covering or erasing certain sections of the text. Did it feel good or unsettling? How does the layout change the meaning of the words?

Add technology to your activity with ‘Talking point’ recorders’. 

This gives the students the possibility to play the patterns in the artwork allowing them to experiment with sound and pattern. This is a process similar to coding.

  • Preset the ‘Talking point recorders’ with sounds made by the students.
  • Students then use their work like a musical score, and press the colour on the recorder which corresponds to the colour of a shape in their drawing.
  • Join together for the last 15 minutes to reflect on their works and listen to each other play the rhythms and patterns of the artwork as a sound score.

Australian Curriculum / Visual Arts / Years F-6

 

  • Use materials, techniques and processes to explore visual conventions when making artworks (ACAVAM111)
  • Plan the display of artworks to enhance their meaning for an audience (ACAVAM116)

Victorian Curriculum / Visual Arts / Levels F-6

  • Explore ideas and artworks from different cultures and times as inspiration to create visual artworks (VCAVAE025)
  • Explore visual conventions and use materials, techniques, technologies and processes specific to particular art forms, and to make artworks (VCAVAV026)
  • Create and display artwork considering how ideas can be expressed to an audience (VCAVAP031)

Curriculum Interpretation

This activity incorporates Visual Arts Learning using making and responding, drawing on Winnie Soon Unerasable characters II.

By undertaking these activities, students:

  • Experiment with embodied approaches to art making.
  • Select and experiment with new approaches to process, composition and technical execution.
  • Consider how an artists’ working methods contribute to the aesthetic qualities of their artworks.
  • Analyse how an artwork develops during the process of its making in ways that were not necessarily foreseen by the artist.

Secondary activities

Creating Place using Geometric Construction + Architectural Sculpture


Responding to the installation of Lauren Lee McCarthy’s artwork, Surrogate, students will construct their own architecturally inspired artwork.

This exhibition has many embedded S.T.E.M links through its direct link to technology. Lauren Lee McCarthy’s artwork directly explores Science and technology and the activity directly links to engineering through its reference to architecture. It also has strong problem solving components for secondary students. 

  • Using paper straws students will create a three dimensional structure which can stand alone.
  • The straws will be threaded together with cotton to join the sections together.
  • Students can start by considering how to symbolically represent a places of their choice 
  • Students may draw their architectural designs, or move straight to experimenting with geometric structures using straws and thread
  • Test works during production to see if they can stand up alone. Discuss which shapes appear stronger and why, both which can withstand weight and which shapes are more rigid and unlikely to distort
  • Time permitting, once works are close to completion students can work in pairs to create a collaborative place. Consider Lauren Lee McCarthy’s quasi smart-home/clinic. How can you merge your two geometric designs to form a new, collaborative place?

 

Australian Curriculum / Visual Arts / Years 7-10

  • Develop ways to enhance their intentions as artists through exploration of how artists use materials, techniques, technologies and processes (ACAVAM119)
  • Evaluate how representations communicate artistic intentions in artworks they make and view to inform their future art making (ACAVAR130)

 

Victorian Curriculum / Visual Arts / Levels 7-10

  • Create and display artworks, describing how ideas are expressed to an audience (VCAVAP037)
  • Select and manipulate materials, techniques, and technologies and processes in a range of art forms to express ideas, concepts and themes (VCAVAV042)
  • Explore how artists manipulate materials, techniques, technologies and processes to develop and express their intentions in art works (VCAVAE041)

Curriculum Interpretation

This activity incorporates Visual Arts Learning using making and responding, drawing on the work of Lauren Lee McCarthy’s artwork ‘Surrogate’. Surrogate is the installation in the exhibition which is displayed with the artwork ‘Lauren’ as discussed previously. Students will construct their own architecturally inspired artwork based on the installation.

By undertaking this activity, students:

  • Experiment with scale, size and materials.
  • Select materials which they interact with in an everyday way to develop a three dimensional structure.
  • Consider the possibilities of how an artists’ working methods contribute to the aesthetic qualities of their artworks.
  • Develop knowledge about how structures, building and installations are made for exhibition.

Terms of Use

This education resource has been produced by ACCA Education to provide information and classroom support material for education visits to the exhibition Data Relations. The reproduction and communication of this resource is permitted for educational purposes only.

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