“Can computer media be used to create artistic representations that link the individual and the social without subsuming one in the other, i.e. the particular in the general? If we consider the range of computer techniques available for organising and viewing data, things look quite encouraging. We can switch between multiple views of the same data, traverse the data at different scales, and move between multiple media linked together. And we can do this in near or close to real time. We can also instruct software to search through and mine very large amounts of data – such as the data produced by the millions of real people who engage in online chat, write blogs, send emails, upload their photos on Flickr and so on. What types of representation can be created if we combine these computer techniques and new ways of gathering data as well as of structuring and displaying it? (…)
This is a new period we are living in now. It is a period when more prosaic but ultimately more consequential ways of exploring data have come to the forefront, including search engines available to the masses and data mining as used by companies and government agencies.”
MANOVICH, Lev. Social Data Browsing. Tate Online – Net Art. Fevereiro de 2006. Disponível em: < http://www.tate.org.uk/netart/bvs/manovich.htm >.