Stephen Cartwright

Associate professor

Stephen Cartwright’s work exists at the confluence of science and art, where hard data intersects with the intangible complexities of human experience. Since 1999 he has recorded his exact latitude, longitude and elevation every hour of every day. Cartwright incorporates his location data and other personally recorded information into his digital and sculptural work. Cartwright continues his work related to his latitude and longitude recordings, other recent work focuses on human alteration of the natural landscape and fictional landscapes created from other self-recorded data.

Stephen Cartwright was born in State College, Pennsylvania in 1972. Cartwright earned a BA in Studio Art from the University of California, Davis and an MFA in Sculpture from Tyler School of Art in 1998. In 2008 he joined the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is now an associate professor in the School of Art and Design.

Cartwright has exhibited widely throughout the United States. Recent exhibitions include: Machine Wilderness – The Albuquerque Museum of Art and History; Machinations: Kinetic Sculpture in the Age of Open Source – Columbia College Chicago; (Degree) – Luminary Art Center, St. Louis; Cressman Center for Visual Art, University of Louisville. He also frequently discusses his practice at events and academic conferences, recent speaking engagements include: The Quantified Self Conference; The North American Cartographic Information Society Annual Meeting; College Art Association Annual Conference.

Web

Floating Data

The artist transforms personally collected data from everyday life into sculptures, drawings, animations and installations that explore the relationship between data and human experience. Since 1999, the Latitude and Longitude Project has recorded their GPS location every hour, revealing patterns in movement, routine and personal history. By combining data visualization with digital fabrication, the artist translates numerical information into tangible, abstract landscapes. The presentation focuses particularly on Floating Data, a series that embeds coloured data representations within transparent acrylic blocks, creating sculptural landscapes that reveal connections between personal habits, environmental conditions and lived experience.