Excellent exhibition at Somerset house covering data visualisation and the increasing data footprint we leave in our daily lives.
There were a few stand outs:
Florence nightingales original diagrams and analysis of Crimean war statistics were a wonderful window into how graphical thinking can render complex information in far more digestible and meaningful forms.
For sheer creepiness, Heather Dewey-Hagborg’s Stranger Visions couldn’t be matched – a series of faces ‘built’ from the DNA found on discarded cigarette butts. Although generic in appearance, they were a reminder of how freely we dispose of our genetic data, and how far science has moved beyond fingerprints.
Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway’s Black Shoals: Dark Matter was a great way to round out the exhibition, almost functioning like a chill out area to relax after the intensity of the big data we’d been confronted with earlier. However, this planetarium is based on financial data – flaring constellations representing millions of pounds fluctuating in the stock market. It left me with a sense of serene terror.
Finally, although it had little to do with data visuals per se, Morag Myerscough’s identity and signage for the exhibition were a consistent highlight, lending the whole experience more fun and vigour.