Data Suite Or Technical Objects Turned Dybbuk Boxes - Naomi B. Cook at Belle Beau, Arles
Data Suite
Or Technical Objects Turned Dybbuk Boxes
Welcome to Data Suite, Naomi B. Cook’s latest immersive exhibition. Built as a reimagined hotel room, it contains everything you might need or want during your stay in a “home away from home”. All the items in the show—the bed with its pillow and blanket, welcome mat, lamp, Bible, clocks, and mini bar—are data visualisations. They are generated from specific data sets, analyzed with corresponding algorithms, and projected onto usual objects, altering their visual and/or functional features. All used data sets are extracted from everyday contemporary life, each coming from ordinary online services, starting with Google and ending with dating sites.
To the 20th-century media theorist Vilèm Flusser, contemporary life is permeated by technical images—the notion he formulated. Flusser died in 1991 and did not articulate on concepts such as internet and AI, though his writings are visionary, to say the least. Technical images stand apart from regular images (paintings, drawings) or text, which Flusser saw as characteristic of pre-history and, respectively, history. These three represented for him different levels of abstraction: images interpret reality; text interprets images that interpret reality; and technical images interpret text (which interprets images that interpret reality).Technical images include all images created using an apparatus—from photographs and charts to television footage and social media profiles. Certain technical images are unique, while others have the capacity to propagate. The best example to illustrate this is a meme. Created in a specific context, it proliferates across others, keeping a link to the past while projecting into the future. A meme is born of one author but recreated by thousands. Its sense evolves with each iteration, yet it remains true to its original intention. To fully understand a meme, one must grasp its language and origin. A meme works on code. Most other technical images follow a similar model.
As contemporary people we are thus compelled to constantly perceive our surroundings through various layers of decryption for technical images—thankfully these are not only memes. Essentially, we need decode our world. These theories resonate clearly with Naomi B. Cook’s data visualizations. Similar to technical images, they decode underlying information. However, in this case, text expands to data. What’s more, the final result is not a two-dimensional image but a three-dimensional object. Let’s call them technical objects.
As with technical images, technical objects also have the potential to propagate, appearing as models ready to be projected into other situations. Take the example of the work Troika, which began by harnessing data from three subjects—two men and one woman—entangled in a love affair. Troika in Russian refers to a set of three. In passing, it also describes a three-horse harness and a typically two-women-one-man dance mimicking the horses. This dance originated in post-war Soviet Union, where the disappearance of men en masse triggered fluctuations in archetypal monogamous relationships, opening them up to different formats inofficialy approved by society. As the dance diversified to other variations (two-men-one-woman, three-women, three-men), so did the relationshps.
Troika's data generated an initial schematic drawing depicting a map and geo-locations of the three-lover-triangle across one city and one day. Provided similar data exists, such a schematic drawing could, of course, be used in another situation with different characters. And the same could apply to almost any other work. Like Market Findings, which is composed of three clocks operating according to the Flash Crash of 2010. Should data from another crash become available, the clocks could begin moving differently. Or Words Exchanged which displays a monologue composed of Tinder text data from a woman, algorithmically arranged so that it begins with the words and phrases she used most on the app and ends with those she used least. Any other user’s Tinder data could be plugged into the same scheme. And so on. Endless propagation.
In Ken McMullen’s 1983 film Ghost Dance, well before the “hauntology” theories, Jacques Derrida discusses the 20th century society of images, concluding that “the future belongs to the ghosts.” But what kind of ghosts? Who are they?
Derrida died in 2004, barely seeing the beginning of present day internet. He too must have had a hunch. Picking up where Derrida stopped, the usual philosophical rhizome, Bernard Stiegler later elaborated: “If we say the future belongs to ghosts, it means that the future is about repetition, the emergence of the repressed, the reactivation of the dead, virtualisation. [BINGO!] It’s about how knowledge can only be projected into its future by a return to primal impulses…”
Data Suite is a precise commentary on these principles, analyzing in depth the exploitation of humanity’s primal impulses in the search for basic needs like companionship and safety. By adopting the capitalist language of quantification, Naomi B. Cook bases her artistic discourse on data, attempting to count and derive, then transform and subvert the product obtained. She thus drifts into a non-quantifiable space of humor, absurdity, and ultimately, the glitch. The glitch is a symptom of the weirdness we sense in our society—Flusser’s alienation from nature, Philip K. Dick’s time out of joint, Derrida’s ghost. It reflects the resistance to ostensibly rational decisions: Brexit, Trump’s election, Russia’s war over Ukraine, Elon Musk. The glitch, in its various forms, signals that today’s economic, political, and social spaces cannot accommodate the ever-growing quantities of data generated by an ever-growing population. A break must come, the glitches are the cracks.
Incidentally, glitches began appearing more frequently and intensely after 2016, the year Meta rolled out its algorithmic ordering of information instead of the previous linear view. The first ideas for Data Suite emerged that same year.
In Data Suite, ghosts of the past and future converge in techno dybbuk boxes. Like any hotel room, this is the zero point between the last and the next client. It is no wonder, then, that Clotilde de Vaux makes a cameo as a dancing ghost.
Amid this digital profusion, the materiality of Naomi B. Cook’s work is fundamental. True to the methodology of a conceptual artist, she easily switches between mediums and techniques. Her sharp curiosity, paired with her unique urge to decode the world, enables her to dissect every task—quilting, coding, drawing, binding, animating, tufting—until she fully masters it. Many of her objects are meticulously crafted by hand. This choice reflects a need to be in control, as well as in direct contact with her works. Partially, her approach recalls feminist traditions, like those of Helen Chadwick or Sarah Lucas, emphasizing craft and tactile production dowsed in smart irony and commentary on tech and human alienation. Simultaneously, Cook is an artisan of code, crafting the algorithms behind works like Words Exchanged, Market Findings, Not Just Only Fans.
Beyond her pointillist drawings, Naomi B. Cook’s style is palpable less through aesthetic uniformity then through her ability to encode layers of intricate ideas into manageable objects. Be it through the etched plexiglass rendering of the Nobel Committee’s failure to recognize Rosalind Franklin’s pivotal role in discovering DNA, or through a tufted welcoming mat depicting the real fingerprint of a dating app user, the artist elevates such complex questions as bio-hacking, true identity, opaque spaces, internet phishing, mutation.
Yet, Data Suite is ultimately also a space, steming out of encounters and exchanges, while fostering new debates and discoveries. It is at the same time a confrontation with, and an escape from, our digitally drennched lives, reminding us that the glitch is a site of both resistance and possibility.
Info+
– exhibition text –
Data Suite
Belle Beau, Arles.
Curator: Gabriela Anco
opening 5.12.2024
5.12 - 21.12.2024
