Microsoft have an art exhibit at Sandton City at the moment, running until 3 July, to try make big data more interesting without actually using any data. Like many art exhibits, its head scratchy stuff (or beard-strokey, if you have one) and you really have to stretch quite hard to see the relevance. In the context of what they were doing, I am disappointed in the execution of the art itself. While the exhibit is about Big Data and the art pieces have explanations relating to Big Data, it does not mean that they works automatically convey anything meaningful about the topic. Remember, coloration does not equal causation.There are a lot of options to actually incorporate some kind of data into this art, but none of these works attempt to quantify any measurable values visually. There are some very good designers and artists in South Africa who work with data that aren’t represented here. They are paid to make big data more visually accessible.
However, more importantly, where is the IoT tech that Microsoft is pushing? Surely pairing these artists with some engineers or data scientists would have made for a much more tangible representation of art in the Big Data space?
