What is your first project? Together with my second half, I'm one part of the, I'm Juliane Götz, I'm one half of the art duo Quadrature. And over the last decade, we've done a lot of works that revolved around data. Data always is our main artistic material in all our works. works and my PhD project now actually tries to put our existing practice onto solid grounds to find a theoretical basis for what we've been doing all along which is also the reason why my poster in the end is focusing or centered around six of our latest of our artworks that all of course deal with data and the goal that I try to achieve with my PhD research in the end is to understand and analyze the mechanisms of data-based art as a curious and caring practice and critical practice that generates intuitive, situated, subjective and emotional knowledge which translates to what is it actually that artists do with data that scientists do not and how do we actually do that because for now we've just like the last decade it was just uh and we were just working on it without having a yeah the theory or academic underwriting to it. And last year I was teaching at the Bauhaus University in Weimar and I was trying to pass on concepts and methods to the students there. And I found that I was actually missing the words and that I couldn't find any related research to it. So the idea is to do this now and the six works that you see here they are all based on satellite data for simplifying the poster now. Satellite data mainly comes as in this format it's called a three-line element data set and with this data set you have one for each satellite you can calculate and predict the position and the velocity of any object in outer space at any point in time. So you can calculate where each satellite will be. And normally this is used for space awareness and by governments and military or for satellite operation planning, for planning new orbits, and of course as well for satellite tracking software, for astronomers, for enthusiasts, for classical orbital data visualizations. So this would be the conventional usage of these kind of data sets, what scientists do and what the normal applications would be. And I would like to borrow from Bruno Latour a duality that he has described in an article about critique and how critique might need to evolve. And he makes up a duality there that he calls the matters of fact versus matters of concern. And to quote him is, the question was never to get away from facts but closer to them, not fighting empiricism but on the contrary renewing it. very based on irrational principles, very much based on matters of fact, on rationality, on acclaimed objectivity, which is, of course, very discussable, whether this objectivity is actually true. While then, art and artistic practice would be rather concerned with matters of concern, which means that they take into account and that they care about the reality and the other circumstances that are hidden behind the data. In the end, data is a very insufficient model of our reality. It's used to boil down the complexity of the world into numbers. to boil down the complexity of the world into numbers. But these numbers, of course, then only depict a very shallow, a very superficial image. And the idea is that art and artistic practice with data reconnects these superficial images, these unsatisfactory representations, with the world from which they originate but the art then is free to also encompass additional layers and additional stories there it's it's not it can go beyond the original context and add expanded dimensions It can add new layers of information, of stories, of subjectivity to the original data, and by that enhance and expand the knowledge that the data is inscribed in. So and now here in the poster I try to create a first experimental taxonomy of what the mechanisms and the principles might be that artists actually use or that me, we, Sebastian and me might have used in the last decade with our artworks and for example to quickly describe what we have here is we have done one work, it was our starting point with satellites with satellites, it's called Satell satellite and it was a little drawing machine that tracks life all satellites flying over the exhibition venue and it draws the paths of the object onto old maps and over the course of the exhibition the map would be there would be a black square evolving this machine actually had to retire already five years ago because there are just so much more satellites up there than there used to be 10 years ago and from there we moved on to orbits it was a audio visual performance where we really were involved much more just with the beauty of the path of all the objects that were in outer space. It was quite mesmerizing for us to see the first time we had it come up on the screen. Then we found unofficial databases and we went more into a contextualizing of the data. And we were developing two works, Classified Orbits. developing two works, Classified Orbits. It's kind of a long-time exposure of the path of unofficially existing satellites in outer space, satellites that no nation claims. And Position of the Unknown works with the same data, but it was a kind of mechanical tracking device. It was 52 little pointers, each one of them following one of those unofficial objects in outer space and being kind of like a silent witness to their clandestine existence. Then there's two more works. One is called Two Perspectives. Also, we created a custom-made database this time, which only involves the military and spy satellites. And we collected as much as possible from all sources we could find about their mission details, what they are actually supposed to be doing up there, and what kind of sensors they might equip. And whenever we always show the closest satellites to the exhibition venue, the closest military satellites, we tell the stories that we know. Some of them are really quite disturbing. But then combined with a speculative image of what the satellite might actually see. So you have these beautiful images of the world seen from above but then the whole time a voiceover telling you what they are actually doing up there and how they are spying on you at the moment and our latest artwork was scope scope tries to be the new divinatory science for the upcoming techno scene and in the end it's a percy flash of our techno savior beliefs that everything will be better if we just use more technology because what we've been as humankind doing in the last 50 60 years now is that we've recreated the sky we are putting myriads of new objects up there and we are changing the night sky forever although the night sky has been serving as our guidance forever. So the question was, what does it do to our stories if we change our main reference point for many stories? And so we created a horoscope based on all launches. You enter your birth date and then you get a personal horoscope based on the satellites that were launched with you. You enter your birth date and then you get a personal horoscope based on the satellites that were launched with you. And I tried to make up now a set of four key overarching concepts. And this part is still very, I would rather call it intuitive. I haven't done a lot of theory research whether this might keep up and keep like a better examination. But for the starting point, I created the topics of agency, of aestheticization, which of course is always element of artworks. Contextualization would be key part of all data-based art. And then I created one corner called figuration, with which I mean all more associative approaches. And I tried to find out how I could fit the works that we have done into these corners. the works that we have done into these corners. And, yeah, for example, there's over each, under each of these topics, there are more, for example, immediacy and relatability under that concept of agency where key figures and satelliton and positions of the unknown because they both work with this moment of nowness and they transform the objects to be a very tangible. Everybody knows that satellites exist, but with these two works and also with two perspectives, you really are related to them in the now. And it becomes a very authentic character. While, for example, orbits and also classified orbits, they both rather work with a shift of perspective because you are no longer as a audience we are out you transfer you go outside of earth and you look from outside down to earth earth is not even visible anymore and you leave the normal human perspective and scope of, is a very personalized artwork. Then we have visualization, which is in almost all of our works, this plays a huge part. And sonification in this part, more or less only in orbits because the sound and the visuals are generated both live from the data. And there as well, we have space and time as a variable because we go back and forth through time and also through space. And positions of the unknown in this series is the only one where actually the data gets a body, where it gets materialized into our actual tangible object. The contextualization part is probably, I mean, there can be so much more things to be found here, but of course there's always a certain amount of criticality in there, of investigation of data. We have a narration in the superspectives with the voiceover, and also we often work with various chapters to tell the story behind the data. And scope is the only work where we actually made up our own story. So what do we else have? Also scope, we misappropriated the data very much. So we really took it from the original context and made something completely unplanned from it. And I also really, I came across the notion of diffraction and made something completely unplanned from it. And I also really, I came across the notion of diffraction from Karen Barad and Donna Haraway, which I see that it plays a very important part in this whole topic. And last but not least, we have the corner of figuration with some poesy and speculation and humor and all this concept together is something that I would I started to call now wild thinking which is a term that is called that is borrowed from the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and he had a book in 1962 he's a ethnorthologist and he was writing La Posse Sauvage and in there now I need to look at my quote line, he speaks about thought in the wild state as opposed to thought that has been cultivated or domesticated with a few to yielding a return. And this idea of a mind in an untimed state, as an antithesis to a modern western solution-seeking, goal-oriented way of thinking, which science often has, I found it very, very appropriate to describe the artistic research which tries to balance the necessary scientific research and rigor. So we try to stay true to the data, but with the freedom of artistic autonomy and additional layers. Yes, so that's it. That's my starting point. And I'm super happy to have Hannah here, Hannah Perna-Wilson, professor at Bush University and former Interface Cultures master's student long time ago. First one, actually, first year, right? Yes, and I never officially studied Interface Cultures. I was studying Industrial Design, but I fell in love with Interface Cultures. Yes. Thank you, Juliane, for this presentation. I really enjoyed, yeah, for the first time also hearing you talk about multiple of your artworks in one take. And maybe just also a bit of background, like you are now in the beginning of your PhD. For me, this is also, I feel like I'm a beginner in thinking of data-based art as a thing in itself. So I noted down some questions that came to me, and I have no expectation that you would now want to try to answer all of them, but I kind of formulated them as questions. And one of the first very, very basic ones was, what do you mean when you talk about data in data-based art? As an example, I started to question if I was an artist working with colors on a canvas, my eye is receiving data, and I'm interpreting this and choosing which colors to draw with. Would this also be a valid data-based art? Then second question, or kind of maybe a series of questions, addresses this, why categorize? Why for your PhD decide that you would like to try to create categories in order to better understand data-based art? I can totally understand why. I feel like it's a very valid and known means of investigating things. But one question might be, did you have other ideas of how you could approach this investigation? And you mentioned now the categories you've shown us here are coming more from an intuitive first attempt at trying to create some form of organization. And I wondered if you had a plan for how you want to move forward. If you do want to go down this line of categorizing, how do you decide what categories to work with? Is it you alone? Is it also maybe a collective effort? You said you also want to look into more literature and see what you can find there. And then I wondered, because you make this nice distinction between matters of fact and matters of concern, and I wonder if you see your PhD work then more as you're basing it on artworks, but are you creating a matter of fact, or will your PhD also be a matter of concern? creating a matter of fact or will your PhD also be a matter of concern? Will you be trying to bring your research closer to us in a more emotional, unrational way? Thank you, Hannah. So let's see if I can give some, at least attempts of answers. So what do I see as data? I think in the end I see data as a kind of notation system, information that is derived from the word. It can stem from all kind of inputs but there is uh informative layers somewhere there is a but yeah so yeah in the end the color can be a data set of course if you if you see it as state and if you treat it as state i think it's also a matter of how i um go towards of how I go towards something that I handle. But for example, we also did artworks that were more revolving around self, interacting with itself. And of course, they would also generate data. But in this context, I would not really like to apply them because they only talk to themselves they don't they don't try to talk about anything else than what they do with each other these artworks it's just a revolving mechanism or also generative art of course is involved with data but also there there are different questions in the in the main focus and not what the data can actually tell us about the word, about its meaning, about its context. Then with the categories and also with the matters of fact, yes, it's actually completely correct. completely correct um i'm at the moment i'm trying to or i'm at the moment i'm creating matters of fact based on these um these artworks at least this is and for me it was a interesting first step and i actually also for example there's this one artwork there that's um the classified orbits in the corner right up there and we did it but i never felt really comfortable with it it's a work that I really I never pushed it to be shown somewhere because it just was not it didn't feel round and now that I actually made up these categories and I tried to see what we did there I mean I did I didn't start with the categories but I started to write down okay what is this artwork what might it be doing and what might this artwork include what kind of matters and then when I finally had the this system there and I saw that this one is the only work that only uses elements from two of those categories that I started to write down and this I found interesting because for me there was always something missing and then in the end I mean I checked this of course with my partner because he also should say what he thinks that we've been doing and he came to the same result and this was something that I found already quite interesting to see that this feeling of artwork missing something now was kind of proven with facts the very good facts and how i would like to continue is to um on the one hand to to enlarge my initial data set of only six artworks it has to be become wider i would like to look at more of our own artworks but also on artworks from other artists and of course mainly mostly i would also like to speak with other artists, working with and on data to see if this starting point is something that they can relate to and how it might evolve. And the last question, whether you see your PhD, would it maybe become an artistic work of concern I hope so in the end of course that's in the end this is also what matters no the the things that matter is not the information itself the pure number but it's everything it encompasses it's what is standing behind it yeah yeah and just to the get back to also to that first question of what is data or data-based art, and you're saying you have a way to narrow it down so that it makes sense for your work. But I also felt that another question I had in my head was, when you do create categorizations, you also change how other people see other things that are not within your categories. And so I feel like we might start to see more things as data because now we've got some kind of system for organizing things. Thank you for the project. I like very much. I want to know the work. Sorry, I didn't know yet. I have some true anecdotes and one speculation here. One of the anecdotes was that in the 60s, when the first satellites came, the Landsat, there was a driver track in the middle of the Amazon. There was nothing there. They were trying to build the military cop in the 60s, trying to build an autobahn that goes through all the Amazon. And this guy that was a trucker driver realized that he could synchronize the satellite to make intercontinental calls with something from the kitchen. So he started to divide this technology with all the other truckers that were running through the kitchen. So he started to divide this technology with all the other trackers that were running through the Amazon and then the people, the military in the US realized that something was happening with the satellite. So they bring the military to the Amazon to fight a driver track. And there is an artist called Bruno Viana. I think he made a doctorate here in Europe. I don't know where he is right now. He made a work with this, it's a kind of documentary. At the time he used a multi-touch interface that was circular and tried to make the narrative go through all this data through video. There is a friend of mine right now, I think there are many signs that they're still open to receive image. So this old satellite from the 70s, you can download the image. So he's making image with different times of lapses. So it's also a kind of multi-time documentation of the territory, very beautiful because of the kind of the quality of the data. But I was thinking as we have all these satellites over us and, you know, that some observatories need to manage the time they run the research because they have all the pictures, you know, vanished with this. Do you think that in the not so far future we will need to do a kind of sky archeology? Yeah, actually I was trying to start to collect those images of observatory images where the satellites run through, where you, yeah, they're actually, yeah, that's this thing we are destroying our, we are changing it, maybe destroying it. And this notion of, I mean, there are still some civilizations, some people in areas of the world that have not been touched yet by Western civilization. And I would really love to hear the stories that they come up with for explaining what is happening up there, why all these new entities are showing up. And yeah, I mean, very likely in a few decades, the satellites will just be too many and they start destroying themselves and then we have a clear night sky again. very likely in a few decades, the satellites will just be too many and they start destroying themselves. And then we have a clear night sky again. But until then, I, yes, sky ecology, of course. I mean, there are plans to plant projectors up there and to have satellites go in formation so that you can have logos on the night sky and all this kind of stuff. It's really, it's a new frontier. It's untouched territory for now, but it's up for whoever wants to grab it. Thank you so much. I just have some thought fragments for you. So yesterday we talked a lot about dual-use technology at the symposium at us. And I mean, satellites are a great example for dual-use technology, right? There's weather satellites for civilian use, and then there's a lot of military satellites that are used for like war purposes. And I'm wondering, what does it do, do what effect this is what we discussed yesterday in the context of volunteer and policing and like an infrastructure that has been built for with military purposes in mind what does it do to a society or also to artists when we use infrastructures of control for civilian use cases or in artistic projects like does that change anything does it have an effect at all and i really like the the agency corner when it comes to agency and control and power because many of these infrastructures are privately owned right and we can try to map them out but there will always be a lot of blank spaces on on the map that data that we don't have that is like kept far away from us i think is that like someone from isa was speaking at the panel yesterday and they've been opening up all of their satellite data at least that's what he claimed um but i'm also wondering about the blank spots and I noted down what could an artistic code of conduct of working with this data look like. I don't know if that's a useful bit of thought. And yeah, this whole power and control and agency corner is still somewhat working in my in my head and I was also thinking of the oldest citizen science projects were around weather data people collecting weather data like hundreds of years ago and nowadays we have weather satellites right we have a replaced like citizen scientists who would openly share their data and build communities and report and look at nature from a very different angle. And now we have this technology that gives us the facts of, will it rain tomorrow or not? So yeah, just another thought on the project, but super interesting. Thank you so much. Thank you, Hannah. Thank you, Juliane. Thank you, Julia. Thank you, Fernando. Bravo. thank you Juliane thank you Julia, thank you Fernando bravo