Data Embodiment: Irrupting space with digital narratives

Abstract

Sharing content on the internet has become an everyday practice. Digital communities use social media as a platform to develop discussions using hashtags, centred around both trivial and politically relevant subjects. By creating a dynamic data sculpture, Ephemeral Data, this thesis examines whether embodying LGBT-related hashtags into a physical form has the potential to create space for empathy, discussion, and engagement. In so doing, Ephemeral Data explores the transition of digital information into physical artefacts, becoming a new medium to signify political debate within the digital realm. Examining whether alternative forms of representation of a data stream can change our perceptions and whether this transition to an embodied object can reframe the semantic meaning of these digital bits of self-generated content. This thesis concludes that seeing data visualised physically in space can raise awareness of a controversial subject matter. It does not, however, appear to change the literal meaning of the subject in question.