reimaginings
/reimaginings/ is a critique of the current culture of data visualization,
hyperlinking and relationship mapping. Databases, visual graphing tools, and
other internet technologies have made it possible to connect any packet of
data to any other packet of data. The illustration of these relationships
through research papers, graphs, animations and dramatic reenactments is
often a display of technical wizardry designed to assert the importance of
the case being made and to intimidate with complexity and rhetoric.
Who makes the decisions about how meaningful relationships between data
points are constructed? Who designs the database and the user survey? Who
writes conclusions? More than anything, who transforms data into
information? /reimaginings/ makes the case that these functions are anything
but neutral in a world of information overload.
/reimaginings/ is an _imaginary_ research project designed to use Instant
Messenging conversation data to "improve" the Newtonian 7-color spectrum by
adding more colors to it. Visitors to the /reimaginings/ project upload
their IM conversations into a database, map the lines of the conversation to
colors and view conversations reenacted using images and text-to-speech
voice technology.
By aiming for a farcical goal (improving Newton's Color spectrum by adding
more of the same colors) and using absurd methodologies (mapping colors to
IM conversations), /reimaginings/ provokes the visitor to question the
veracity of data-mapping, hyperlinking and scientific rhetoric by being
constantly perched at the edge of language, graphic and technological
seduction and an uneasy sense that the project is incomprehensibly complex
and ridiculous.