Data Vitality: Soft Infrastructures and Economies of Knowledge Data Vitality: Soft Infrastructures and Economies of Knowledge

Data Vitality: Soft Infrastructures and Economies of Knowledge

Dipoli Gallery, Aalto University, Helsinki, FI


Exhibition Curatorial Note:

The exhibition explores the changing role of data in society by combining interdisciplinary perspectives on how data policies are shaping education and research across art, science, business and technology.

As we live in an increasingly data-driven world, how does this impact our practices and attitudes to data at an individual and societal level? Data can be seen as a tool, a utility, a language, a risk and a resource. Questions arise from the real and speculative potential of rendering our bodies, movements, labour, research and environments in data, as machine-readable and reusable. In what ways are we reliant on the capture of data and analytics for solving issues like sustainability in climate change, healthcare, cybersecurity and novel materials? What role does data literacy play in understanding data rights and intellectual property? These questions are addressed through a combination of multidisciplinary interviews and artistic research within the framework of data vitality. It showcases the relationship between human-centric data and the soft infrastructures which connect, intersect and render new dynamics between education, research and society.

The exhibition at Dipoli Gallery creates a visual and material experience of our relationship with data in the context of research, education and society including new artworks informed by research infrastructures such as OtaNano, developments in quantum technology, arts and media practices, operational impacts of master data and digitalisation, data literacy, digital archiving, open data and intellectual property.

The exhibition website, is a pilot of Aalto University’s new virtual exhibition platform that includes further texts, interviews and media.