Data Mining Yourself as Artistic Practice
After my presentation for DMS8002 (the Basic Techniques module that I’m doing on my course) it was suggested to me that using my coursework as a platform to generate visualisations actually means that – to some extent – the artwork I’m creating is a reflection upon the work I’m doing for my major module.
This reminded me of the Mail Trends project, which takes the contents of an IMAP-enabled email address and combs it for information. With that information, it then produces a bunch of graphs relating to the usage of the email address. Above, you can see that I’m unlikely to send you an email at 6am in the morning. Below, you can see that I’m in touch with Brian Degger a lot. But, strangely, not as much as I’m in touch with myself… Why my own name comes up more than anybody elses, I’m not sure; this might be a side effect of having between two or three other email accounts plumbed into my Gmail account.
This project is interesting to me as it gives you the chance to look at a body of work you produce, but it’s a body of work that you produce by accident. Artistically, the output isn’t fantastic; it has colour and shape, but those are really secondary concerns as to displaying the data graphically. The Feltron Report stands at the other end of this sort of practice; it’s the work of an artist who obsessively records whatever he does and produces an annual report on his activity.
