Micro, Meso, and Macro Data Collection and Analysis, as a Method for Speculative and Artistic Exploration

Abstract

In this work, an attempt is made to explore the emerging computationally-enhanced private and public environments by analyzing their ecological transitions and its implications on practical, aesthetic, and speculative dimensions. The author has decided to methodologically dissect the multiplicity of information that exists on many possible-to-detect scales (micro, meso, macro), and utilize this extraction as a tool for experimentation and redefinition. With the use of custom-made hardware and software utilities (sensor devices, sentiment analysis algorithms, online APIs, and many more), a vast amount of data is collected and used as a multidimensional layered architecture that constantly shifts and transforms. The extracted and analyzed content of the collection becomes the essence of the work that is shaped and refined through digital and physical making – middleware, recursion, mapping – and by utilizing technological objects within the physical space, the creative process is augmented and amplified, exploring not only new practices and novel applications, but rather redefining behavior, thought-process, and context.