Are We Data? 

This event probed deeper into the preoccupations driving the Are We Data? installation. At stake are questions about how we can know, represent or ‘draw’ people and the methods we use to do so. By staging an encounter between a film representation of the Netherfield housing state and multiple big data visualisations the team aimed to provoke debate about the possibilities, purposes and limits of all forms of representation. Netherfield was designed for how people would live in the future and on the basis of assumptions, data and methods about who those people would be. The people who live there now have little in common with those imagined by the planners and architects. Sapphire Goss’ film explores these discordances by juxtaposing how the natural and made environments come together in unpredictable, unstable ways. The second screen presented live ‘dashboard’ data visualisations of who, where and what people are. The use of digital methods to analyse large data sets has aroused both dystopian and utopian visions of the future. The installation the Roundtable was organised around tried to identify a pragmatic space between these visions by demonstrating how what you see always depends on where you are standing. Understanding the space between the sentiments and techniques of representation may be the key to using data to know and engage in more diverse audiences.

The discussion was live broadcast simultaneously to a remote audience using Periscope. This enabled us to gather data on the audience beyond the room and demonstrated how digital technologies reconfigure proximity, altering what is near and what is far, what is present and what is absent. Panel members talked briefly about the different perspectives they brought to the question of ‘Are We Data?’ before inviting the audience to take part.