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promotion of democratic transparency. Whatever the merits of the Open Data
discourse it has incentivised Governments and city officials resulted in the release
of vast swaths of open, machine readable data on all aspects of Government and city
operations representing a significant opportunity. AR platforms represent the second
factor, they offer an ease of use, are available as apps for a range of location aware
smart phones, and while flawed, overly defined, and with limited opportunities for
customisation they represent the first step in AR, and with time they will improve.
4.2
Data Driven Art
In considering AR art and its relationship with data it is important to locate the
discussion within an artistic tradition of using data (open or otherwise) as a tool of
political critique. I see the potential for the convergence of data space and real space
which AR offers as existing within this tradition and will trace this through three
artists who have exerted direct influence on the
NAMAland
project. These are Hans
Haacke with his seminal
Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real
Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971
, Mark Lombardi's data based drawings and
Josh On's
They Rule
.
The case of
Shapolsky et al.
is of particular interest as it was a data rich
installation detailing ownership of 142 tenement properties and sites in New York
City in the ownership or effective control of the Shapolsky Family. The work was
based on data derived from publicly available records, assembled and refined, in
the case of obfuscated records designed to conceal effective ownership, by the
artist. The work reveals the city as a real estate system, uncovering its complex
structure and demonstrating the ways in which the physical fabric of the city, and
the arcane financial dealings designed to maximise the value of real estate holdings,
are imbricated. It expands the idea of site beyond physical location to include
its associated data space. This serves to activate these sites through providing
a socio-political narrative, transforming individual buildings through augmenting
them with data and thus situating them within a complex network of property and
financial transactions, with far reaching repercussions for the space of the city
and the everyday lives of the people living in these slums (Deutsche
1996
: 169-
181). The piece was to be exhibited in the Guggenheim Museum but the exhibition
was controversially cancelled before its opening in April 1971 with the specificity
of the work cited as the principle reason. The Museum Director held that social
issues should be addressed “artistically only through symbolism, generalization
and metaphor” (Deutsche
1996
: 179). What caused the work to be suppressed was
the specificity of the critique, which data supplied, whereas a generalised artistic
critique would have been acceptable. This demonstrates the power of the data-based
critique which through its attention to detail builds a framework, which goes beyond
what can be thought of as a purely artistic stance though it is bolstered by this, upon
which alternative narratives can be based.
