- Curator：Chen Wang, California State University
- Co-curator：Jinli Shen, Sichuan Fine Arts Institute
From the atomic structure under the microscope to the Milky Way cloud in the vast outer space, photography expands our perception in time and space. Today, with the advent of the era of big data, reading pictures has become a shortcut for the public to obtain information.
However, does data through the camera lens still represent the real world? The showcased artists and institution use different combinations of photography and data to demonstrate their exploration from different perspectives.
The animated video by George Legrady Studio is a metaphor about how individuals adjust their behavior to conform to social norms and pressures. Li Yan uses the overlapping of layers between reality and illusion to display an individual's psychological cognition of things.
Two articles in the New York Times focus on new trends in data-driven media coverage. In recent years, the NYT newsroom has expanded its visual storytelling by encouraging collaboration among reporters, cartographers, videographers, programmers, illustrators, and statisticians.
Peter Ørntoft's data comes from social surveys, and his work uses cultural elements and photography to design data charts. Philipp Schmitt, who worked at the MIT Media Lab, explores the use of image recognition in artificial intelligence, one for AI's creative potential, and another for AI systems that are unique to semantics and photo editing.
Another artist working with artificial intelligence systems, Rodger Luo demonstrates AI's misreading of personal digital identities to remind us of the vigilance to the unknown world. Shaoyu Su's work combines photogrammetry and historical terrain data to create a futuristic visual scene.
What will big data and technology bring to art? The answer is still unknown. This curated photography exhibition presents only the scenery along the way. What we can know for sure is that this is just the beginning of the journey.