Contemporary life is inextricably enmeshed with and encoded by data, this much goes without saying. This talk explores the ways in which contemporary artists are responding to the reality of Big Data. What has been dubbed “data art” has largely become synonymous with practices of rendering strings of numbers into images or sounds, an equation of aesthetics and accuracy that some of have touted as the future of creative production. However, it’s important to remember that art’s potential lies less in its capacity to inform than it in its ability to affect. In this respect, this talk considers the practices of artists such as Wafaa Bilal, Allison Burtch, and Raphael Lozano-Hemmer, whose works depend on data-driven digital media, yet harness them to critique or complicate the hold these technologies have on us.

Mitchell Akiyama is a Toronto-based artist, scholar, and composer. His eclectic body of work includes objects and installations that trouble received ideas about perception and sensory experience; writings about contemporary art, animals, and cities; along with many albums of music and scores for film and dance. Akiyama’s output has appeared in commensurately miscellaneous sources such as Leonardo Music Journal, ISEA, Sonar Music Festival (Barcelona), Raster-Noton Records (Berlin), Gendai Gallery (Toronto), and in many other exhibitions, publications, and festivals. He holds a PhD in communications from McGill University and an MFA from Concordia University and is currently a SSRHC Postdoctoral Fellow at York University’s Sensorium Centre for Digital Arts & Technology.