Birgitte Aga, Rebecca Sinker & Mike Phillips

Curator & Directors

Birgitte Aga is an interdisciplinary designer, artist/maker, technologist, researcher and producer. She creates collaborative and data-driven prototypes, sometimes as art works, cultural probes, interventions, or proof of concept and other times just to play. For the last fifteen years she has been part of the i-DAT Research and Design Collective. Her research currently focuses on prototyping intimate data-driven experiences to question the use of predictive algorithms and personal data for human enhancement and commercial gain. Underpinning her work is a belief that one must embrace the opportunities created by digital technologies to be open and collaborative in order to sustainably co-create.

Mike Phillips is Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts at Plymouth University (School of Art, Design and Architecture), the Director of Research at i-DAT.org and a Principal Supervisor for the Planetary Collegium. His R&D orbits a http://op-sy.com/ of projects that explore the ubiquity of data ‘harvested’ from an instrumentalised world and its potential as a material for revealing things that lie outside our normal frames of reference – things so far away, so close, so massive, so small and so ad infinitum.

Dr Rebecca Sinker is Convenor: Digital Learning at Tate, working with colleagues across the organisation, along with artists and external partners, developing digital learning practice and research. Previously Head of Young People’s Programmes at Tate Britain (2006-11), Rebecca leads the strategic development of Digital Learning for Tate London which includes the HLF-funded Archives and Access learning project and the collaborative research project, Art Maps, in partnership with Horizon Digital Economies Research Centre at the Universities of Nottingham and Exeter. As a practitioner, tutor and researcher since 1990, Rebecca has worked with participants from early years to post-graduate, in formal and informal art and education settings, exploring innovative ways to make and think through audio-visual media.

Web

This is Where We Are’; collectively living, working and being, with and through predictive algorithms.

This Is Where We Are (TIWWA) was an immersive, interactive algorithmic sculpture created by i-DAT in collaboration with Tate Collective London and Intercity for the opening of Tate Modern’s new building in 2016. Combining light, sound and real-time environmental, behavioural and social media data, the installation transformed collective digital activity into a constantly evolving visual experience. Through physical interaction, social media and an AI chatbot, audiences became both participants and sources of data, while the system learned from and attempted to influence their behaviour. The project invited visitors to reflect on the growing role of algorithms in everyday life and to question how data-driven technologies shape human interaction, memory and perceptions of the future.