Gallery: Art in the age of Big Data

For PCA&D’s Spring 2017 exhibition series the College focuses on scientific and technologically inspired art work.  The intersection of science and art shown through cutting-edge technology exemplifies our desire to know more about ourselves and our world.  By combining these topics, it is possible to explore and extend the boundaries of human experience and its future capacity.

“The Quantified Self: The Data Doesn’t Lie”, PCA&D’s next gallery exhibit, running January 17 – March 13, features the thought-provoking artwork of two internationally renowned artists, Laurie Frick and Katie Lewis.

• Katie Lewis will present an artist lecture at PCA&D on January 13 at noon.
• Laurie Frick will present a lecture at PCA&D on February 3 at 2 p.m.
• First Friday Reception Friday February 3, 5- 8 p.m.
• First Friday Reception Friday March 3, 5- 8 p.m.

In this exhibition, Frick and Lewis use data points derived from human actions as the foundation and inspiration for their work. When collected over a period of time, these seemingly small points morph into portraits of not only individuals themselves but one of our collective human race.

• In her work, Frick translates personal data points into an expressive yet orderly representation an individual. Patterns of behavior become patterned artworks, where the mass of data simultaneously predicts an individual’s life and provides a glimpse into one’s hidden personality. Frick’s artwork depicts subjective and nuanced human action as tangible and calculated data.
• Lewis compiles data such as physical sensations in the body or the number of steps taken each day. She then creates distinct forms of data visualization using materials such as paper, thread, sewing pins, or graphite. Her process is labor intensive, consisting of physical repetitions within her self-imposed constraints. Lewis works through the data until her devised system reaches its breaking point. The materials she uses no longer functions — paper tears, walls crumble, and thread becomes an impenetrable net, transforming into visual accumulations.

Katie Lewis, “730 Days” (detail), 2015, Pins and pencil

More about Katie Lewis

Katie Lewis’s education includes MFA, Fine Arts, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA, 2006, BA, Studio Art, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO, 1999, and Universidad de Concepcion, Chile, 1997-98. She has received a Sierra Arts Foundation Grant, Reno, NV 2016 and named Artist in Residence, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass Village, CO 2015.

Her work was exhibited in 2016 in Tilting the Basin: Contemporary Art of Nevada, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, Nevada, and ARAK MONKYZ – Reflections on Synthetic Action, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass Village, Colorado and she received a 2016 Grant to Artists: No Strings Attached, Sierra Arts Foundation, Reno, Nevada.

In 2015, she exhibited in And Yet It Turns: Art and Technology, a Shared Space, Museum of Modern Art Luxembourg (Mudam Luxembourg), Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, Rijswijk Textile Biennial 2015, Museum Rijswijk, Rijswijk, The Netherlands, and Divergence (solo exhibition), Capital City Arts Initiative, Carson City, Nevada.

More about Laurie Frick

Laurie Frick holds an MFA from the New York Studio School, an MBA from the University of Southern California and studies at New York University’s ITP program. Frick recently was awarded residencies by Samsung Research and the Neuroscience Research Center University of Texas. Frick’s talks and publications include The Atlantic, Nature Publishing, Los Angeles Times, Haaretz, New Scientist, NPR, Creative Mornings and TEDx and more. FRICKbits ‘your data is now art on your phone’ was crowdfunded with a successful Kickstarter campaign and is now in the iPhone store. She has exhibited widely, with solo shows in New York, California and Texas. She is represented by Edward Cella gallery in Los Angeles, and Pavel Zoubok in New York.

Frick has recently exhibited and lectured at the DC Art Science Evening Rendezvous (DASER), Cultural program of the National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC, October 2016, World Future Society Conference, Nanobot Murals, Washington DC, July 2016, EYEO Festival, Nanobot Murals, Minneapolis, June 2016, IBM Design Research Conference keynote, The art of data (and prediction), Austin, 2016, Advertising Age Data Conference, Data is Beautiful, New York, 2015, International Time-Use conference keynote, The art of time-use, Ankara, Turkey 2015, Microsoft Research, Studio 99, The art of the data-selfie, Seattle, 2015, LASER, Leonardo Art and Science Rendezvous, Austin, 201, SXSW, From Digital Sharecropping to Data Emancipation, Austin, 2015, and International Association of Privacy Professionals, Summit (IAPP), Washington DC, 2015

(Top image: Laurie Frick, Daily Stress Inventory #7, 2015, Cut leather, laser-etched wood blocks on stretched linen)