Is Big Data A New Medium

The growing quantification of social behaviours changes those behaviours. Extensive data collection alters the way we view our bodies, habits, environments, relationships, and society at large. Big data architectures are increasingly determining classificatory systems in the social, political, and corporate realms.

Bringing together artists, anthropologists, media, social and political theorists, this 2-day symposium ponders questions such as: Can big data be viewed as a new medium in the way that photography and film, and, more specifically, the photographic/cinematic close-up were in the 19th/ 20th centuries? How does extensive data collection shape the unconscious? What is the aesthetics of this process? Does big data, with its predictive abilities, eliminate the future (Berardi 2011)? Does it mark the end of ‘free will’ as we know it (Han 2017)?

Keynote speakers include Btihaj Ajana, Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, Simon Biggs, Masaki Fujihata, Davide Panagia and Jussi Parikka.

Download the Symposium programme

Organiser: Office of the Dean, Learning, Teaching & Research