1995 – Loren Madsen's Early Data Sculptures

Californian artist Loren Madsen has been making data sculptures since 1995 and still continues today. CPI / Cost of Living (left image) is the first of his series: A lamination is one year. Vertical axis is the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for food; the horizontal axis is the CPI for gasoline + electricity. The rising center line is the CPI for housing. The 'snout' is the 1960's when housing and food were cheap. The bulge above the snout is 1973---OPEC, gasoline lines, etc. Thereafter the cost of […]

Californian artist Loren Madsen has been making data sculptures since 1995 and still continues today. CPI / Cost of Living (left image) is the first of his series: A lamination is one year. Vertical axis is the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for food; the horizontal axis is the CPI for gasoline + electricity. The rising center line is the CPI for housing. The 'snout' is the 1960's when housing and food were cheap. The bulge above the snout is 1973---OPEC, gasoline lines, etc. Thereafter the cost of most everything kept rising. On the right image, 6,000,000,000 monkeys, a 20-meter long data sculpture built in 1999 showing the evolution in the world population from 10,000 BCE to today. Also see our entries on Loren Madsen's later work 2004 – Worry (Prayer) Beads, 2014 – District 5, 2018 – New Worry Beads, and our interview with him. Sources: Loren Madsen, CPI / cost of living. Click Next to browse his later creations. Also check out his slides Information as Art. They show many great examples of data art, mostly paintings but also a few data sculptures.

Added by: Loren Madsen & Pierre Dragicevic. Category: Passive physical visualization Tags: art, CPI, data, data sculpture, housing, income, information

1997 – Level: Hans Hemmert's Same-Height Shoes

“Level” (1997), Styrodur/rubber/Velcro/measuring device, 50 pairs of platform shoes with heights of 5-43 cm, installation view at Galerie Gebauer Berlin, © Hans Hemmert and VG Bild Kunst. Guests to this installation picked out shoes that brought them all to the height of two meters. The blue height of the shoes served as a physicalization of the height disparities around the room. Sources: Hans Hemmert (1997) Personal Absurdities, Galerie Gebauer Berlin 1997. Interview With Hans Hemmert, 2018 […]

“Level” (1997), Styrodur/rubber/Velcro/measuring device, 50 pairs of platform shoes with heights of 5-43 cm, installation view at Galerie Gebauer Berlin, © Hans Hemmert and VG Bild Kunst. Guests to this installation picked out shoes that brought them all to the height of two meters. The blue height of the shoes served as a physicalization of the height disparities around the room. Sources: Hans Hemmert (1997) Personal Absurdities, Galerie Gebauer Berlin 1997. Interview With Hans Hemmert, 2018 Art Sometimes Imitates Life, This Time Art Imitates Height, Artiholics.com

Added by: Nick Marotta. Category: Uncertain Tags: art, height, measurement, shoes

2007 – Explosion of Sound Sculptures

In 2007-2008, sound became an endless source of inspiration for data sculptors. Examples include (images from left to right): Binaural by Daniel Widrig & Shajay Bhooshan (2007) Sound/Chair by Plummer Fernandez (2008) Sound Memory by Marius Watz (2008) Reflection by Andreas Nicolas Fischer & Benjamin Maus (2008) I Will Never Change by Us by Benga (2012) Microsonic Landscapes by Juan Manuel de J. Escalante (2012) The Shape of the Sound of the Shape of the Sound by Stephen Barrass (2012) […]

In 2007-2008, sound became an endless source of inspiration for data sculptors. Examples include (images from left to right): Binaural by Daniel Widrig & Shajay Bhooshan (2007) Sound/Chair by Plummer Fernandez (2008) Sound Memory by Marius Watz (2008) Reflection by Andreas Nicolas Fischer & Benjamin Maus (2008) I Will Never Change by Us by Benga (2012) Microsonic Landscapes by Juan Manuel de J. Escalante (2012) The Shape of the Sound of the Shape of the Sound by Stephen Barrass (2012) Spectral Density Estimation by Andreas Nicolas Fischer (2013) Nightingale Bird Song by Yanying Huang (2014)

Added by: Pierre Dragicevic & Yvonne Jansen, sent by: Fanny Chevalier - Benjamin Bach. Category: Passive physical visualization Tags: art, data sculpture, sound, sound sculpture, temporal data

2011 – Ursus Wehrli's Art of Clean Up

Ursus Wehrli, a Swiss comedian and artist, is known for his parodic art project called "Tidying up Art", where he rearranges well-known paintings in an orderly fashion (see his 2003 book and his 2006 TED Talk). In 2011, he started a project called "The Art of Clean Up" where he rearranges everyday objects and people. Also see our other entries on physical visualizations created by rearrangement. Sources: Maria Popova (2013) The Art of Cleanup: Ursus Wehrli Playfully Deconstructs and Reorders […]

Ursus Wehrli, a Swiss comedian and artist, is known for his parodic art project called "Tidying up Art", where he rearranges well-known paintings in an orderly fashion (see his 2003 book and his 2006 TED Talk). In 2011, he started a project called "The Art of Clean Up" where he rearranges everyday objects and people. Also see our other entries on physical visualizations created by rearrangement. Sources: Maria Popova (2013) The Art of Cleanup: Ursus Wehrli Playfully Deconstructs and Reorders the Chaos of Life Chronicle Book (2013) Art of Clean Up Book Trailer (youtube video) Ursus Werhli (2006) Tidying up art (TED Talk) Images from cosmichouse.com, imgur.com, and design-milk.com

Added by: Pierre Dragicevic. Category: Passive physical visualization Tags: art, participatory, people, rearrangement

2016 – Woven Chronicles

Woven Chronicle is a cartographic wall drawing that, in the artist’s words, represents “the global flows and movements of travelers, migrants, and labor.” Kallat uses electrical wires—some of which are twisted to resemble barbed wire—to create the lines, which are based on her meticulous research of transnational flows. Wire is an evocative and contradictory material: it operates as both a conduit of electricity, used to connect people across vast distances, and as a weaponized obstacle, such […]

Woven Chronicle is a cartographic wall drawing that, in the artist’s words, represents “the global flows and movements of travelers, migrants, and labor.” Kallat uses electrical wires—some of which are twisted to resemble barbed wire—to create the lines, which are based on her meticulous research of transnational flows. Wire is an evocative and contradictory material: it operates as both a conduit of electricity, used to connect people across vast distances, and as a weaponized obstacle, such as the fences used to erect borders and encircle refugee camps. Kallat’s family was splintered by the Partition of India in 1947 upon independence from Britain, which divided the country geographically along religious lines and induced the movement of more than ten million people in one of the largest forced migrations in human history. Woven Chronicle speaks to this personal memory—and collective history—in its material presence, merging the artist’s research on migration with metaphors of violence, and accompanied by an ambient soundscape that evokes the steady hum of global movement. Source: Reena Saini Kallat (India, b. 1973), Woven Chronicle, 2011–19

Added by: Santiago Ortiz. Category: Passive physical visualization Tags: art, cartographic, migration, network, wires

2018 – The 20 Year Gap

This data physicalization is an art installation that represents the difference in disability-free life expectancy* and overall life expectancy for different areas in the UK, thereby highlighting the unequal health conditions in the country. Each area is represented by a hanging thread. On each thread a red bottle corresponds to disability-free life expectancy while the blue bottle represents overall life expectancy. The title of the artwork refers to the finding that in the UK there is gap of […]

This data physicalization is an art installation that represents the difference in disability-free life expectancy* and overall life expectancy for different areas in the UK, thereby highlighting the unequal health conditions in the country. Each area is represented by a hanging thread. On each thread a red bottle corresponds to disability-free life expectancy while the blue bottle represents overall life expectancy. The title of the artwork refers to the finding that in the UK there is gap of just over 20 years between the lowest and highest average disability-free life expectancy. The artwork was created by SRG Bennett and Cath Sleeman and first shown at FutureFest 2018 in London. Source: SRG Bennett and Cath Sleeman (2018) The 20 Year Gap. * "the number of years a person can expect to live without a limiting persistent illness or disability"

Added by: Petra Isenberg. Category: Passive physical visualization Tags: art, installation