Database Aesthetics, a collection of essays edited by Professor Victoria Vesna, examines the complications involved with not only creating data-based art but explaining it to new audiences. Theories, problems and ideas pertaining to the use of data in art works, video games, and the operations of every day life are meticulously addressed. Vesna's book provides an impressive foundation with which to appreciate the challenges that are unique to digital media artists as pioneers of a new aesthetic.
BookZone: Many of the essays in your book attempt to illustrate the non-hierarchical, non-sequential, and unwieldy nature of data by making comparisons to cinema and linear narratives. As an artist working with data, what are some of the challenges that you face in presenting the data that you collect for a project?
Vesna: We [database artists] have no precedent so, as we're developing this new work, we're also developing methodologies and ideas while creating a whole different way of looking at how narrative is constructed and how an audience participates and adds information that shifts the data that you provide as an artist.
For an artist, the greatest challenge is to take a subject, just as any researcher would, and really go into depth with what the issues are, what the possibilities are, what the problems are, fully knowing that you can never really have the whole picture – recognizing that – and then, filtering the information in such a way so that the aesthetics and the main message are easy to digest and allow the participant breath to respond.
The challenge that I try to address is that we, as a human race at this point in our evolution, are overwhelmed with information and data that is non-linear. We've been taught, now for centuries, to think in linear ways so, we have this internal battle between how we were programmed to work; how we're being educated in classrooms; and how we experience art in museums; with what's really going on. What's really going on is that we're multi-tasking and multi-processing. We're receiving and exchanging data and becoming much more aware of how interconnected we all are and how everything around us is as well.
The new generations of students face a challenge in particular which is that they have grown up multi-tasking and living with computers. They enter into an education system that is not working that way and it's a difficult adjustment where learning is not necessarily enjoyable or natural because they have to go backward into a linear, rigid system. Everything needs to shift. New generations are going to demand it.
BookZone: Many of the essays discussed interfaces – interfaces being the front-end of data as well as the means by which data is accessed by a viewer or user. The act of collecting data can seem dehumanizing yet it reflects a human need to record facts for posterity. Database interfaces seem to point to the idea of the physical body as an interface to the ideas, experiences and knowledge that are contained by it. I was wondering if you had any thoughts about this.
Vesna: I think our perception of our physical bodies is also shifting because of how our information is understood. Whether you look at DNA as the most amazing data bank and how efficient nature is in organizing that data or the medical system and the way that the data that runs our health is shared; in a strange way, it's dehumanizing but, it's not. It's really about our perception of what that means and whether it can actually be empowering to have more information about our physical bodies. Now, we are also beginning to understand molecular structure and the way that cells work in truly significant ways and I think it's phenomenal.
As someone who studied fine arts and anatomy, when you create a sculpture or build a house, you have to have a solid base. So, if you think about interface design – for example, a web site – the interactivity and the way that you move through the information, whether it's video, sound, photos, text or whatever – that is the aesthetic that emerges.
BookZone: In your essay, "Seeing the World in a Grain of Sand," you point out the ways in which data, such as Social Security numbers, affects and infiltrates our lives. You also mention how important it is for artists to address these issues in their work. Is data-driven artwork being given more opportunities to be shown?
Vesna: Definitely! It's actually quite encouraging to see how media art is starting to be accepted. About ten years ago, when it first started emerging, you could only see our work at electronic arts conferences like SIGGRAPH. These conferences grew but at the same time, digital culture – cell phones, GPS systems, computers, laptops – became integrated into our lives. It's become easier for artists to work with this media because it has become more accessible and less expensive. What used to be separated – visual art and media art – has become integrated in every aspect of art, whether it's photography, video, sculpture, performance, or Web-based. It expands the realm of possibilities.
Museums are recognizing it. I think where it becomes an obstacle is in the art market. If you think about a piece that is interactive, where the audience adds their information or participates in some way to expand the piece and make it more dynamic, how do you sell that? Museums are very confused about what to do with pieces that have a continuous lifetime. I'm not too concerned about it because I think that new markets will emerge.
Professor Victoria Vesna is the director of the new Art/Sci Center at the UCLA Design/Media Arts department. Art/Sci started last year in conjunction with a general education class, Art, Science and Technology. Students were encouraged to use digital mediums such as blogs and PowerPoint presentations to share their ideas.
Vesna also started the North/South Mixer, a quarterly social event that involves both art and science departments on campus. The purpose of the mixers is to encourage dialogue between north and south campus students and to show how "these separations are false," says Vesna.
She is currently reading too many books to be listed – three shelves of books to be exact, divided into several sub-categories: Two Cultures; Math and Art; Artificial Intelligence; Biotechnology; the Human Body; and Memory and Consciousness. The knowledge that Vesna gains from reading these books will manifest itself in the future as either a textbook or an art piece.
Database Aesthetics is currently being used by Katherine Hayles, Professor of English, as an assigned text in her graduate seminar class.
