information as art

Art as In format ionInformation as Art

Loren Madsen 2/10

Jean Auguste Dominique IngresNapoleon I on His Imperial Throne1806

Art has always carried information...

... as propaganda

John Singleton CopleyWatson and the Shark1777

Copley’s historical painting tells of Brook Watson who survived the attack and later become Lord Mayor of London

... as reportage and history

Jean Francois MilletPotato Planters

1861

... as political commentary

Pierre August RenoirLe Moulin de la Galette1876 ... an ordinary scene (extraordinarily painted)

Andy WarholSoupcans, 1964

Jasper JohnsThree Flags, 1958

... and everyday things

While art was leaving behind the grand and the elite in its approach to the ordinary and the everyday, the everyday was taking on artistic dimensions of composition, line, color and narrative.

Science, to clarify and communicate, discovered the pictorial.

John SnowCholera in London1854

Charles Joseph MinardNapoleon’s March on Moscow (1812-13)1869

(In Spoerriʼs residence) was a table. Spoerri drew on a ʻmap” the overlapping outlines of all the 80 objects that were lying on the table on October 17, 1961 at exactly 3:47 p.m. Each object was assigned a number and Spoerri wrote a description of each and the memories or associations it evoked. The descriptions cross referenced other objects on the table which were related. The Topographie Anécdotée du Hasard was printed as a small pamphlet of 53 pages plus a fold out map and index and was distributed as an advertisement for the exhibit. The Topographie Anécdotée du Hasard is more than just a catalog of random objects, however; read in its entirety, it provides a coherent and compelling picture of Spoerri's travels, friends and artistic endeavors.

Daniel SpoerriAnecdoted Topography of Chance, 1962

map, book, index

Hans HaackeMoMA Poll, 1970

Hans HaackeNews, 1969

Hans HaackeShapolsky, et. Al., 1971

Hanne DarbovenKonstruktionen, 1969

Hanne DarbovenKulturgeshichte, 1980-83

Roman OpalkaPainting, nd

Steve Chappelle, Reebee GarfaloRock ‘n’ Roll is Here to Pay: The History and Politics of the Music Industry, 1977

Artists missing: The Weavers, Pete Seeger, Bonnie Raitt, Lou Reed, Velvet Underground

see also The History of Metal (www.thehistoryofmetal.com/)Timelines, graphs, maps of heavy metal music

Nancy BursonGuys Who Look Like JesusIndividual photo portraitscombined to make a single image

Nancy BursonWarhead I, 1982

Nancy BursonMankind, 1983-85

Chris BurdenAll the Submarines of the United States of America, 1987Cardboard models

Vitaly Komar & Alex MelamidMost Wanted Painting, 1993-

Vitaly Komar & Alex MelamidLeast Wanted Painting, 1993-

Truth isa numberAlex Melamid

Komar & MelamidMost Wanted Painting, 1993-Some survey results Dia Center, www.diacenter.org, The Most Wanted Paintings on the web

The twelve-color woodblock prints were created by entering images, after Duchamp, Monet, Kirchner, and Mondrian into a computer scanner that quantizes and transforms these images into the minimum number of pixels, thus determining each of the colors in the four prints.

Sherrie Levinewoodblock prints from the

portfolio Meltdown1989

Donald Suggspaintings, 2007

Loren Madsen, 1996 web.me.com/lorenmadsen/hist.ab..html

Loren Madsen, 1999

Loren Madsen, 2001

Loren MadsenLength of Day, 2009

Loren MadsenWeekly Likelihood of Rain, 2008

Komar & Melamid

Carol DiehlApril, 1997

Carol DiehlMay, 1997

Carol DiehlJune, 1997

Marl LombardiMeyer Lansky’s Financial Network ca. 1960-78, 1996

Mark LombardiWorld Finance Corp and Associates ca. 1970-84

Miami, Ajman, and Bogota-Caracas (Brigade 2506: Cuban Anti-Castro Bay of Pigs Veteran (7th version), 1999

Mark LombardiWorld Finance Corp and Associates ca. 1970-79 Miami, Florida (6th version), 1999

Mark LombardiProject file cards

Erica BaumFrick, 1998

‘Frick’ and other projectsare available online atprivatecirculation.com/?p=421 in .pdf form. For free !

Mark BennettHome of Jed Clampet, 1995

Mark BennettHome of Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, 1997

Benjamin EdwardsStarbucks Locations in Seattle, 1997

The map specifies the locations. The painting is a combination of all the Starbucks facades

Benjamin EdwardsWal-Mart Map, (date?)

Miranda MaherAfter Reasonable Research... 1998 (ongoing)

All the wars from 1CE to the present, each war taking a line. The fanfold book is 30+ feet long and has one blank line.

“Everyone Ever in the World” is a visual representation of the number of people to have lived versus been killed in wars, massacres and genocide during the recorded history of humankind. The visualisation uses existing paper area and paper loss (die cut circle) to represent the concepts of life and death respectively. The total number of people to have lived was estimated through exponential regression calculations based on historical census data and known biological birth rates. This results in approximately 77.6 billion human beings to have ever lived during the recorded history of humankind and is represented in the poster as total paper area (650mm X 920mm). The total people killed in conflicts was collated from a number of historical source books and was summed for all conflicts – approximately 969 million people killed, or ~1.25% of all the people to have ever lived (die cut area = 650mm X 920mm X 0.0125). The timescale encompasses 3200 BCE to 2009 CE – a period of over 5 millennia, and 1100+ conflicts of recorded human history.

Miranda MaherRivers of My Childhood:All Straightened Out 1996

Mekong, Nile, DanubeEach drawing 35 ft. long

Adrien SegalTide Table, 2007

Michael Najjarhangseng_80-09, 2008-2009hybrid photography, lightjet-print52 x 79.5"

Michael Najjardow-jones_80-09, 2008-2009hybrid photography, lightjet-print52 x 79.5"

Loren MadsenRenaissance Landscape, 1997

German DAX, Japanese Nikkei, NASDQ and Dow from 1920-1980

Monica GoetzCoordinates, 2009

The Gallup Organization did a poll: Who is the happiest person in America?

Gallup’s answer: he’s a tall, Asian-American, observant Jew who is at least 65 and married, has children, lives in Hawaii, runs his own business and has a household income of more than $120,000 a year. A few phone calls later and ...

Meet Alvin Wong. He is a 5-foot-10, 69-year-old, Chinese-American, Kosher-observing Jew, who’s married with children and lives in Honolulu. He runs his own health care management business and earns more than $120,000 a year.

Alvin and Trudy-Schandler Wong

Corinne Vionnet, Photo Opportunities (2005-2010)Series of photographic works entitled "Photo Opportunities", from hundreds of snapshots of tourist locations found on the Internet. By collecting and then bringing together successive layers of around a hundred similar "photo souvenirs", these images conjure up questions about representation and memory of places.

self-portraits?hell yes!

Robert RauschenbergPortrait of Iris Clert, 1961telegram

This was created for a 1961 exhibition of portraits of the Paris dealer Iris Clert.

Ashley BickertonSelf-portrait, 1987(?)

Danica Phelps, March 7 - 13, 2004mixed media on paper on board15" x 30"www.zachfeuer.com

Danica Phelps, May 22 - 28, 2005mixed media on paper

30" x 22"www.zachfeuer.com

Cory ImigPsychogeographical Mapping, ?Legos, drawn chart

I kept track of all of my destinations in the downtown area of Savannah, Georgia over the course of a month (1/24/08 - 2/24/08). Each day of the week was assigned a color. A skyline developed consisting of the places I frequented in the city.

Cory ImigJune 27, 1986, ?drawn & painted chart

The Television Guide from the day that I was born. Each foot represents an hour. All of the shows were categorized (news,

comedy, drama, talk show, children, religion, sports, movies, and educational), each category was assigned a color.

Cory ImigPath Tracking 11.01.07-11.01.08

All of my receipts from the past year sorted into various categories and sewn together

Tracey EminEveryone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-95

Fabric sewn to camping tent interior

R Justin Stewart2am-2pm, 2008copper, wood, thread, steel

a 3 dimensional diagram of the Twin Cities Metro Transit System from 2am to 2 pm Sunday morning

R Justin Stewartself-portrait (Oct 7th-Nov 6th), 2008inkjet on paper, 31 drawings

A series of 31 drawings depicting my movements on the Twin Cities Metro Transit System from October 7th-November 6th

Loren MadsenData portrait of Libbe, 1998

inkjet on paper,

Photos, events, births, on March 21, throughout history, for my wife’s birthday.

Lani KuniyukiCoded Diary, 2009

Color and printing on paper

Each day Ms Kuniyuki made diary entries in Japanese. The characters were translated into a language of shape and color decipherable only to the artist.

Julia Lines Wilson

Infographic time tapestries

Each color represents a different activity. The yellow-gold represents eating. Darker purple/navy represent sleep. The warp was calculated for it's full capacity of yarn and then divided into hours based on how many days I would try to fit into each frame. One hour was about 1.5" of yarn. So each activity was recorded, measured, and woven into each frame.

Loren MadsenSelf-portrait After Francesco Albani’s St. Sebastian, 1998-inkjet on paper

Personal loss and trauma, transmuted

Katrina Cristobal21, 2009ink on paper

Micah LexierSelf-portrait as a wall divided proportionally between this black type representing life lived and the remaining white space representing life to come, based on statistical life expectancy, 1998vinyl type on wall, dimensions variable

Personas Profile, MIThttp://personas.media.mit.edu/

A data mining function which returns a statistical profile of what the web knows about you

India AmosSelf-portrait in Data: Beverages, 2009photo on Flickr

Books:

Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information, Graphics Press, 1990

Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Graphics Press, 2001

Crosby, The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250-1600, Cambridge, U Press, 1997

Hobart and Schiffman, Information Ages: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Computer Revolution, Johns Hopkins, 1998

Susan Bender, et al, The World According to the Newest and Most Exact Observations: Mapping Art and Science, Tang Museum, Skidmore College, 2005

Victoria Vesna, ed, Database Aesthetics: Art in the Age of Information Overflow, U of Minnesaota, 2007

Articles:

Slate: Infoviz Art (www.slate.com/id/2197749/)

'Data, data, everywhere' The Economist, Feb 25th 2010, (www.economist.com/specialreports/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=15557443)

The Data Driven Life, Gary Wolf, New York Times Magazine, 4/26/10 (www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/magazine/02self-measurement-t.html?pagewanted=3&emc=eta1)