Day-to-Day
Data exhibits the work artists who seek inspiration from insignificant
details in their own or the publics’ everyday lives – artists who
use daily experience as research material from which to obtain their data. This
section of the website provides a context for the way these artists work and
considers the continuing relevance of work inspired by day-to-day life.
A great champion of the minutiae of life is the French
writer Georges
Perec. In his essay The
Infra-Ordinary he pleads for the necessity to observe, contemplate
and analyse the things we see around us day in, day out. He urges us to consider
the significance of the actions, objects and experiences that we take for granted
each day, as he believes them to be the only things in life we can ever hope
to understand. It is impossible to perceive the entirety of the world because
of the distant, removed way in which we, as individuals, view it. It seems logical
that the things we have most contact with are the things of which we have greater
knowledge. It is therefore possible to see why everyday life is an instinctive
focus of the Day-to-Day Data artists’ work.
Through the application of a scientific or methodical approach to objects, events
or experiences which a normal scientist (or normal person, for that matter)
may well overlook, the Day-to-Day Data artists create an absurd or
humorous new vision of the everyday life we are all accustomed to.
Exploring the Exhibition Theme
The idea of Day-to-Day Data can be seen as two parts which can be broken
down and analysed separately: the day-to-day and the data, the subject matter
and the methodology. For the Day-to-Day Data Publication
the exhibition theme has been approached from these two distinct angles, opening
a debate about the contrasts and crossovers between what the artists have chosen
to study and the way in which they have chosen to study it.
A thorough exploration of these two areas of the Day-to-Day Data theme
has been provided through two specially commissioned essays: Ben
Highmore, the authority on everyday life theory, looks at the varied subject
matter of Day-to-Day Data in his essay Unprocessed
Data: Everyday Life in the Singular. Kris
Cohen, sociologist and researcher into the ritual of photo-blogging on the
web, addresses the question of why artists have chosen to create and work with
data in his essay Better the Data
you Know…
On 18 March 2006 the Day-to-Day
Data Symposium was held the
ICA London. Five of the twenty artists involved in the project were invited
to present the ideas and methodologies surrounding their works made for the
show, which address a fun and varied array of subjects. These include: the history
of words, the movement of fugitive shopping trolleys around the city, the patterns
in everyday routine, Nail Salon distribution in Greater London and the news
headlines that occur as you eat your evening meal. The
artists explored the similarities and differences between each of their systems
of research and practice and, in doing so, presented a journey through the greater
concepts of Day-to-Day Data.
Developing the Exhibition Theme
On 23 & 24 August 2004 the Day-to-Day Data Exhibition
Development Workshop took place at the Angel Row Gallery in Nottingham.
The workshop was attended by ten selected artists, the Angel Row Gallery and
Aspex Gallery curatorial staff, Arts Council England representatives and Sarah
Cook, an independent curator who (together with Ellie Harrison) selected
the artists for the workshop. Through a combination of presentations and experiments,
the workshop encouraged discussions into the practice of working with data and
the obsessive behaviour that is associated with the persistent collection of
information. In a specially commissioned text, Tick
the box that best represents
your interest… Sarah Cook summarises some of the key themes that
arose during the two-day workshop period.