Abstract
Keywords:
Virtual reality, personal data, data consent, data privacy, sound, composition, LiDAR scanning, data sonification
This paper delves into the aesthetics and ethics surrounding the collaborative virtual reality artwork, Your Data Body. Made using medical scan data as a metaphor for our ever-expanding bodies of intimate personal data, Your Data Body seeks to challenge how we interact with the data of others, questioning the etymology of the word data, meaning “given” and questioning whether in many cases, data is rather “taken”. Using the gaming device of moving through a sequence of scenes, users first encounter open-access anonymized scan data and later donated data given with active and ongoing consent of the subject. Each scene situates the medical scan data within LiDAR scans, is accompanied by poetic elements, and has a complex sonic composition that combines field recordings, choral composition and data sonification as a way to situate the data geographically, temporally and emotionally.
- Marilène Oliver is an associate professor of printmaking and media arts at the University of Alberta. Marilène works at a crossroads between new digital technologies, traditional print and sculpture, her finished objects bridging the virtual and the real worlds. Oliver uses various scanning technologies, such as MRI and CT to create artworks that invite us to materially contemplate our increasingly digitised selves. Marilène currently leads two art & science research projects: Dyscorpia: Future Intersections of the Body and Technol-ogy and Know Thyself as a Virtual Reality.
- Scott Smallwood is a sound artist, composer, and performer who creates works inspired by discovered textures and forms, through a practice of listening, field recording, and improvisation. Much of his recent work is often concerned with the soundscapes of climate change, and the dichotomy between ecstatic and luxuriating states of noise and the precious commodity of natural acoustical environ-ments and quiet spaces. He performs as one-half of the laptop/electronic duo Evidence (with Stephan Moore) and teaches as an associate professor of composition at the University of Alberta, Canada, where he also serves as the director of the Sound Studies Institute.