The Fifth Elephant 2014

Why listen to a talk on art in a conference focused on technologies that power analytics? Because beyond the world of functional, need based & user-centered applications is a much more diverse world of data art. A field that has lesser constraints, and more opportunity for creative expression. Not only would it be exciting for any data enthusiast to see how technology & data are being used by the new breed of artists today, it’ll open up the narrow view of how data can be represented (and hopefully motivate you to try something new!).

Through this talk I aim to introduce the essence of using data in art, various media & properties that can be leveraged, and a quick primer on Generative Art. I hope this will excite beginners to pursue this alternative way of using data, and let the experts take a break from conventional analytics & visualizations and enjoy something different.

Outline

A talk on Data Art for a tech-focused audience must introduce the essence of art (vs design) and the purpose of creating art. I’ll introduce the field with a few teasers (conventional art vs data art) and then introduce the modes in which data can be mapped in the final art form (mostly visual attributes, and a bit of other forms of media too). This will be followed by an introduction to Generative Systems in art, where an art form evolves from data (and isn’t completely controlled by an artist) and a categorization of these systems (with hand picked examples) that I had explored recently.

Speaker bio

I’m Rasagy Sharma, and I visualize data at Microsoft IDC. I’m a recent post graduate from National Institute of Design, Bangalore where I pursued Information & Interface Design, which had a heavy focus on Data Visualization.

I’ve recently been interested in Generative Systems to create art, and this talk will leverage on my research for my Colloquium paper on Creative Coding, in which I categorized ~100 generative art projects and the popular media used.

Links

• Slides of the talk: https://speakerdeck.com/rasagy/using-data-for-art
• A Generative World: A tumblr dedicated to some of my Generative Art projects http://agenerativeworld.tumblr.com/