Creating and Curating with Data

Alex May and Anna Dumitriu took part in Creating and Curating with Data - how do artists make sense of data?, an online webinar presented by DRIVA Arts DRIVA on 15 September 2020. The session used Susceptible as a central case study, alongside contributions from Irini Papadimitriou and Donna Close, to explore how artists, curators, and producers work with complex datasets and turn them into public experience.

The discussion focused on more than data visualisation as a surface effect. In Susceptible, tuberculosis genome research, microscope imagery, and global travel data are brought together to make antimicrobial resistance and international interdependence felt at human scale. That made the work a strong example for a conversation about how difficult, technical, or abstract information can be translated into forms that remain rigorous while also becoming accessible and affective.

For May, the webinar connected directly to a wider practice built around memory, mediation, and the cultural consequences of digital systems. Here those concerns were framed through the politics and poetics of data: who produces it, how it is interpreted, and what kinds of understanding become possible when artists work with it critically rather than simply illustrating it.