Data ecologies: Laika’s Dérive and datawork.

Abstract

Today the affordances of contemporary data representations and presentations allow for the reading of complex relational works, which I am classifying as data ecologies. Data ecologies can be performed with and across spatio-temporal networks of relations, and can be understood as assemblages of the agentic quality of flow. Data ecologies connect with the rise of statistical thinking throughout the nineteenth century, and developments in technology into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In this paper data mapping and data mining strategies are explored to develop a concept of data ecologies in interactive, reactive and generative creative works.