New Media Artist: Martin Wattenberg

Assignment #1:
Research a media artist and write about he/she uses media to create art. Observe carefully and be specific.

Martin Wattenberg

"My work focuses on visual explorations of culturally significant data. I'm constantly significant data. I'm constantly seeking new ways to represent information to create connection, insight, narrative, and beauty. My research interests include data visualization, collaboration, and collective intelligence on the web."

 

Martin Wattenberg came up from a Google search of "pioneers of new media art" and I began to investigate his personal website. I'm personally very interested in the visualization of data and it was a pleasant surprise to find that Wattenberg was both a scientist and a artist, using his knowledge of one to support the other (and vice versa).

He investigates the relationship between language and space, translating the data he accumulates from various research methods into physical artistic visualizations.

For example, the above images are from a piece named "Fleshmap" (2008). His collaboration with Fernanda Viegas resulted in "an inquiry into human desire, its collective shape and individual expressions." They surveyed several hundreds of people on their erroneous areas on their bodies. The result was tens of thousands of ratings and data that were derived into visual "maps" of sensual desire.

Wattenberg claims that his medium is "data visualization, a technology developed by computer scientists to extract insights from raw numbers This technique is ideal for investigating a world represented by digital traces, where truth is hidden in masses of information. The resulting studies take the form of web sites, prints, and videos."

I believe that similar to some other new media art, this medium can be considered controversial for several reasons. One of which is that there is no physical craft on the artist's abilities. Instead, there is an input of data into a system that outputs a visual image. However, museums such as the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the London Institute of Contemporary Arts, clearly believe that new media art is the creation of art in current times, using current mediums.