VIBRANT LIVES
Vibrant Lives (2014-2018)
critically comments on this use of personal data by giving audiences a real-time sense of their own voluminous data output. By blending vibrotactile interfaces connected to personal data output with immersive performance installations, Vibrant Lives brings attention to the boundaries erected by ideas of disembodied, abstracted, “immaterial” metadata, and people.
Why Vibrant Lives?
Globally, people produce 2.5 quintillion (10^18) bytes of data per day. That’s roughly 3.5 million bytes of data per person, per day. Governments continue to sweep up this information, all while arguing that such activity logging is benign, or even beneficial, surveillance. Nevertheless, it is clear that this is a highly valued (monetized) part of our lived experience.
We explored more intimate approaches to critically examining data surveillance by making it personal through the use of intimacy and touch. The vibrotactile interfaces give people an intimate connection to their personal data as it leaves their personal devices. We use the metaphor of “data shed” to describe the persistent mess of data we output—much like dead skin sloughing off our bodies.
PROJECT TEAM
Co-directors: Jessica Rajko, Eileen Standley & Jacqueline Wernimont.
“2015” photos by Deanna Dent