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PhD Student Seminar – Of Accuracy and Aesthetics: Staging realities through the performance of Big Data
Mon, February 22, 2016 @ 3:30 pm - 4:00 pm
KMD Collaborative Program
PhD Student Seminar
PRESENTER: Richard Windeyer \ Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies
When: Monday, February 22, 2016 \ 3:30 – 4:00 PM
Where: Room 728, Bissell Building, 140 St. George Street
*Join us afterwards for refreshments during the KMDI Coffee Club from 4:00- 5:00 PM
ABSTRACT:
Increased access to Big Data is rapidly transforming the means by which individuals come to understand each other’s experiences and interactions with the world around them. The widespread adoption and integration of networked mobile devices, activity trackers, ‘smart objects’ and social media platforms now generate massive quantities of data every single day. Meanwhile, the general public increasingly relies on the work of infographic designers and visualization artists to extract meaning from the data and distill it into more easily consumable formats without bias or agenda. My research investigates how public engagement with Big Data may (or may not) be enriched through the materials and practices of artistic performance. Of particular interest is examining the notional tensions at play between the accuracy of interpretation and representation of data on the one hand and the aesthetics of audiovisual art, design and performance on the other. A central focus of this research concerns how the strategies employed in mapping datasets to the materials of performance have the ability to both clarify and distort representations of real-world events and conditions.
BIO:
Richard Windeyer is a 3rd-year PhD student at the University of Toronto through a collaboration between the Knowledge Media Design Institute and the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies. With a background in electronic music composition, and sound design, his research focuses on methods of data sonification and sonic interaction design within participatory performance practices. He is also a member of the University of Toronto’s Digital Dramaturgy Lab. Previously, he has taught music technology and electroacoustic composition at Wilfrid Laurier University and was a co-founder of the Canadian Association for Sound Ecology.