Leave No Trace

[the teeming void] rarely posts on his blog, but it’s always interesting when he does. I’ve linked to his blog several times already: on digital theory, jewellery based on weather data and his book on art and artificial life.

His latest post is about another of his rapid-prototyping projects, where he created a cup using Processing, based on meteorological data. It looks slipshod to say the least, but those variations are caused by climate change, and they reveal a trend. It’s a particularly interesting example of data visualisation, an area which will only grow in importance.

The Guardian newspaper has published many articles over recent years on opening up data e.g. on Ordnance Survey maps and crime, the London datastore is perhaps the first for many cities in this country (see also Transport for London), and the recent publication of the COINS database on government spending could lead to some interesting work.

At an apparently more prosaic, or at least human scale, Jeremy Wood is a GPS artist capturing activities like mowing the lawn, on display at Tenderpixel in London until 22 June.

There is so much potential for digital artists to use this data (though being confident in the use of APIs is a hefty requirement). But [the teeming void] doesn’t just capture data in interesting ways. He writes about it too. His post on the underlying messages about data in a series of IBM commericals is fascinating, and highly recommended reading on the slyly manipulative approach.