&Now 2015: Blast Radius

Emerging technologies are transforming how we collect, process, and transmit data. Traditionally, we take in new data through our senses, augmented or otherwise, as facts of direct observation, and then analyze that data in the hopes of finding patterns therein. Those patterns are information, i.e. representations of data, which provide the foundation for knowledges built across cultures, disciplines, and practices. Now, in the era of “Big Data”, this model of knowledge acquisition is crumbling around us, because the volume, velocity, and variety of new data greatly exceeds our ability to process it using traditional means.  

Critics have increasingly regarded “Big Data” as a crisis of theory, and most have looked to science for solutions. In contrast, this panel of artist‐theorists will look to their own literary practices, as well as the practices of other authors and artists, and examine how artists can represent, interpret, and contextualize data to help generate new theories, knowledges, and literatures. VJ Um Amel will present “Tweet World”, a 3D immersive experience that uses actual tweets from global protests and 2D network visualizations to build worlds. Erik Loyer will show “Stepwise”, an open source web and mobile framework for one‐button performance of procedural text. Adam Sulzdorf‐Liszkiewicz will present “Mark Ditto Mark”, a conceptual novel generated by a browser extension, as well as an overview of several other literary and artistic browser extensions. Jeremy Hight will present “34 north 118 west”, the first GPS‐driven locative narrative, and “Carrizo Parkfield Diaries”, a sound, image, and text narrative edited by data from sensors in the San Andreas fault. These presentations will be followed by a roundtable discussion of data‐driven literary pract