Universal Algorithm for Basic Human Experience

 

Universal Algorithm for Basic Human Experience 

by Rev. Luke Murphy

I have an anxious relationship with graphs and diagrams. On the one hand, who doesn't love a really nice piece of data visualization? On the other hand, how often do you see ones that take it to far?
The artist statement for this piece says of the graphs it generates: "they are both the rationalization and visualization of things that resist measurement."

I like this piece because it articulates the reasons for the allergic reaction I sometimes have to graphs and diagrams, the suspicion I carry in me that all these visualizations do more to obscure the truth than represent it. Of course I’m mostly wrong. Data visualizations, really brilliant ones, communicate way more than words or perhaps even images can. I just have this inherent distrust of things with axes and labels. I really can’t explain it. My dad’s a mathematician. I did pretty well in AP calc.

But of course this piece in its absurdity enacts the distortion that I’m uncomfortable with. It’s the requirement to distill a complex situation into variables, to see correlations and assume correspondence.  

I also like the UI aspect:

Webart is so weird and exciting because there’s no other conceptual art form that I can think of that works in interactivity so seamlessly. With earlier forms of generative art that required something of the viewer, we are highly conscious of behaving in a way that we wouldn’t normally (how frequently do we fill the walls of a room with nearly identical squiggly lines?) But you can engage with a piece of Webart and believe that you’re answering your e-mail.