Sophie Ashdown

My research topic focuses on how data can be used as a medium in art, to create beautiful and engaging pieces that also happen to be data visualisations.

I want to create some pieces of my own using data, initially using ink drawing but eventually move to painting and perhaps even collage.

One of the artists I’m looking at for my research is Nathalie Miebach, who creates incredible wall-size collage pieces and large colourful sculptures. All of her work focuses on weather, which gives her a wealth of data to call from, and also makes the pieces engaging because everyone in the world experiences weather in some way.

I think it would be smart to have a theme to the data that I’ll use for my art pieces so I’ve thought a lot about what might work. Here are some of the options I’ve considered:

Music.

Everyone likes some kind of music so it would be relatable. I have a wealth of 3 million pieces of data from the catalog of music at my work at Audiosocket. I’m fairly sure that the CEO would let me use the data provided the individual tracks are anonymised. I could look at the types of instruments used on different genres of music. For example you’d expect that electric guitars are highly used in rock but less so in classical. Or what types of moods per genre – for example “happy” might be more likely in pop than in jazz.

There are other sources for music data to look at. Spotify publish quite a lot of statistics such as top streamed songs from one year to the next. It would be interesting to look at how listening trends have changed over time.

Music is one of the strongest contenders given the wealth of data and the link to my day job. Plus I just love music!

Animal welfare.

As a vegan for 30+ years, this is a topic that is close to my heart. There would be data about numbers of animals killed in abattoirs and how those numbers have changed over time. Numbers of animals killed from animal testing would be interesting if harrowing. I am a long time supporter of Animal Free Research which is a charitable organisation focussed on finding alternative ways to test than on animals. Over the years their work has saved millions of lives by replacing animal testing with other clinical testing that does not harm animals.

I would like to bring more attention to the topic of animal welfare generally, and with recent trends I think it would get good support. I have personal links to several animal charities so I think I could also get some tie-ins with one or more of them to help promote my work and the messaging.

The downside of this topic is that it is heavy to the heart. People may not want to confront the realities of animal suffering and therefore not want to have my art on their wall. This is a sensitive topic generally and I’m not sure that I want to get too politically focussed in my work. I myself might find it difficult and uncomfortable to deal with what the data means. Just doing some initial research into the data made me feel sad and despondent, especially as unfortunately the numbers are not really improving over time.

The environment. Granted this is a huge wide-ranging topic so there would be no shortage of data. As we learned early in the course, some people think that artists should only be making pieces that highlight environmental issues.

However there are two main reasons why this is not a road I want to go down. One is that my work could again become political and I don’t think I want that. The other is that truthfully there is already a lot of art and culture devoted to this topic. It’s everywhere and I feel like my art would get lost in the crowd. I even found a competition that was run for this very topic.

World records.

This may seem like a strange one but it’s one that many people get interested in. I could have a piece that traces the 100 metre dash over time, perhaps including data like ages or nationalities of competitors, weather on the day the record was achieved, what event it was at, etc. Perhaps there will be some interesting correlations. I could compare male and female records. Are women closing the gap to me faster now or has it stayed the same?

It could be fun to look at some more obscure data like hottest chilli’s eaten, or number of balloons popped in one minute or highest number of freckles. Okay maybe not these ones but if I peruse my boys’ copies of the Guinness book of records then I’m sure I can find some interesting candidates. I’m not sure how well they would translate to art but it is something to think about.

I think the sporting world records are probably the most viable to work from.

The problem with this one is that although I find it interesting, I don’t feel a lot of personal connection which I think is important if I’m choosing a big road to go down.

Male to female comparisons.

Of course this is a topic that everyone has a connection to, but particularly women I feel. Since reading the book “Invisble Women” by Caroline Criado-Perez, I was astounded by what she calls the “gender data gap.” For example 95% of drug trials are done on men only because the researches don’t want a woman’s menstrual cycles to skew their data. You’d think that’s all the more reason to include women in the trials!

There would be a lot of data out there to use and would be a topic that many people are interested in. I am interested in it so this one is a good contender.

But what to choose?

I can tell you that I think I’ve already decided and it is not listed here. I’m working on creating a first piece with this data idea, then I can decide if it’s viable to continue down that route. For now I’m keeping the idea private because if it works then I think it’s going to be both intriguing and powerful, that almost everyone can relate to, and would set me on a new path that I’m excited about. If it works!