On December 4, 2015, I attended a talk by Olga Subirós and José Luis de Vicente in conversation about the Big Bang Data exhibition at Somerset House and its origins. The talk was chaired by artist Usman Haque. The curators walked us through several projects that are part of the exhibition revealing insights about their development process and the purpose behind making them. For example, while the entire exhibition celebrates data in a way or at least shows how crucial it has become in our everyday life, one project called Data Cannot plays a collage of interviews by different experts explaining what data cannot do for us and why data cannot replace human beings and so on.
During Q&A, I asked the curators, “When you were developing this exhibition’s concept did you intend to make an art exhibition that takes data as its subject or a data exhibition that’s presented artistically?” Their answer was about how data and art co-exist culturally in the 21st century so it was an intuitive subconscious decision in a way. As intuitive as the curators were, I didn’t feel the exhibition design process was human-centred. It is more of a data exhibition that chooses art as its medium of communication. I could’ve asked them about who the key visitors target segment was when they designed the exhibition if they ever had one, but I chose not to because I felt that was not a key part of their thinking process and as it was, the talk went overtime so I didn’t want to delay the event any further. The next day, I was chatting with an Uber driver and I brought up the exhibition and some examples from what’s on display. I wanted to see if he would be tempted to visit. Although I did my best promoting the idea, he was polite enough to go along with the conversation but I doubt that he will actually go. I’m not sure if the approach of putting and the exhibition out there and let it attract whomever it attracts delivers the biggest impact on society. Until service designers find ways to engage that Uber driver in such topics, holistically and collectively as a society we won’t achieve any significant progress.
I recommend visiting the exhibition.
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