July 16, 2024

ArtCenter Exhibition Seeing the Unseeable: Data, Design, Art－Part of The Getty's PST ART: Art & Science Collide－Explores Big Data's Impact on Daily Life

September 19, 2024 through February 15, 2025

Featuring the work of more than 16 artists and designers, including Refik Anadol, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Mika Tajima, Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg, and others at the forefront of data visualization.

On display at ArtCenter's Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery. Admission is free and open to the public.

Big data. The dawn of it in the early 1990s brought advancements in data visualization—with huge amounts of information organized graphically to make it engaging to researchers and to the public. In its early forms, data visualization was used in map-making and creating statistical graphics, and to convey information in the sciences and support analytic reasoning. Since then, the means to gather, mine, comprehend and understand data have progressed.

From September 19, 2024 to February 15, 2025, ArtCenter College of Design proudly presents Seeing the Unseeable: Data, Design, Art, a wide-ranging and multilayered exhibition exploring how contemporary art, design and culture respond to big data’s impact on daily life. On display at ArtCenter's Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery, the exhibition is part of The Getty's PST ART: Art & Science Collide, Southern California’s landmark art event. The exhibition will feature works by more than 16 leading data visualization artists and designers.

"For these artists, data serves as a prompt, much like a language, to communicate with the audience through novel means of discourse and experimentation," said ArtCenter President Karen Hofmann. "The exhibition explores a critical cultural moment of the data divide, namely emphasizing racial, ethnic and socioeconomic inequities, as well as who data is collected by and how it is used."

Featured artists include Refik Anadol, Laurie Frick, Hyojung Seo, George LeGrady, Rafael Lozano Hemmer, Giorgia Lupi and Ehren Shorday, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Sarah Morris, Data to Discovery: Santiago Lombeyda and Hillary Mushkin, Mimi Onuoha, Semiconductor: Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt, Linnéa Gabriella Spransy, Mika Tajima, Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg, Peggy Weil, Christine Wertheim, Margaret Wertheim and The Institute for Figuring.

"We're honored to have this exhibition be a part of The Getty’s PST Art: Art & Science Collide,” said Stephen Nowlin, the exhibition’s co-curator. “It aims to open a dialogue on issues ranging from the vastness and capabilities of data systems to the personal, social and humanitarian consequences of data collection and technologies. Recognizing that data visualization has become an influential force in contemporary art and design, Seeing the Unseeable: Data, Design, Art hopes to transform visual literacy in the global landscape."

The exhibition focuses on nuanced concepts about data and data visualization that include Data Humanism, Invisible Data and Data Environments. Giorgia Lupi, represented in the exhibition by a large scale installation created in collaboration with Ehren Shorday, advocates a humanistic approach. Lupi coined the term Data Humanism in reaction to computer-generated graphs, pie charts and generic human icons used by mainstream media in the ‘90s. Hormonium, by Rafael Lozano Hemmer, illustrates chronobiology by combining nature forms with text and human time- and life-cycles.

Invisible Data references the unseen nature of data and the influence of data biases. The Library of Missing Data Sets, by Mimi Onuoha, highlights forgotten or traditionally overlooked communities. Sarah Morris’s Sound Graph Series both explore the deep relationship between sound and visual representation. Mika Tajima’s Archive of Feelings is the artist’s first-ever NFT project that utilizes a custom algorithm to process text-based social media data and forecast collective emotions.

Data Environments works express concern for Earth’s current state and climate. Cloud Prototype by Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle is a large-scale sculpture formed by the study of weather systems and compilations of numerical data from thunderclouds. Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg’s Wind Map depicts, in real time, wind patterns related to geographic locations throughout the United States. Pod Worlds, by Margaret Wertheim and Christine Wertheim, simulates—using crochet—coral reef ecosystems threatened by natural and human causes. Refik Anadol’s AI data paintings, California Landscapes: Generative Studies, radically compile and re-visualize clusters of publicly available images sourced from select locations to examine humans’ experiences of nature.

Seeing the Unseeable: Data, Design, Art is organized by Julie Joyce, director, ArtCenter Galleries; Stephen Nowlin, artist, curator, and founding director of ArtCenter’s Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery; and Christina Valentine, curator, ArtCenter Galleries.

Participating artists in the exhibition:
Refik Anadol
Laurie Frick
Hyojung Seo
George LeGrady
Rafael Lozano Hemmer
Giorgia Lupi and Ehren Shorday
Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle
Sarah Morris
Data to Discovery: Santiago Lombeyda and Hillary Mushkin
Mimi Onuoha
Semiconductor: Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt
Linnéa Gabriella Spransy
Mika Tajima
Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg
Peggy Weil
Christine Wertheim, Margaret Wertheim and The Institute for Figuring

For more information about PST ART: Art & Science Collide, please visit: pst.art

Location:
Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery
ArtCenter College of Design
1700 Lida Street
Pasadena, CA 91103
exhibitions@artcenter.edu

Williamson Gallery Hours:
Wednesday through Saturday, 12 p.m.–5 p.m. (Closed Sunday–Tuesday and holidays)
Admission to the gallery is free. Free parking is available at 1700 Lida Street, Pasadena, CA 91103.

For previews and special appointments, please contact: exhibitions@artcenter.edu

About the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery: Located in the center of ArtCenter’s historic Craig Ellwood building (Hillside Campus), the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery is the College’s flagship gallery space, serving as a welcoming point for students, faculty, staff and the public. The gallery is named after Alyce de Roulet Williamson, ArtCenter 100 founder and Trustee, whose generous gift, paired with a gift from the James Irvine Foundation, funded the construction. Built in 1992, the 4,600 square foot space was formerly a courtyard space that was transformed through a design by architect Fred Fisher. Williamson Gallery programs offer professional quality exhibitions of art and design, placing an emphasis on cultural expression that has current relevance to contemporary culture. 

About ArtCenter Exhibitions: ArtCenter Exhibitions includes the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery at the Hillside Campus in Pasadena above the Rose Bowl, the Peter and Merle Mullin Gallery, the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography Gallery and the Hutto-Patterson Exhibition Hall at the South Campus a mile from Old Pasadena, and ArtCenter DTLA in downtown Los Angeles. These curated spaces embody ArtCenter's institutional will to understand artistic thinking and design strategies as levers in promoting social advancement, the pursuit of humanitarian innovation, and the use of critical inquiry to clarify objectives and truths. 

About ArtCenter: Founded in 1930 and located in Pasadena, California, ArtCenter College of Design is a global leader in art and design education. ArtCenter offers 11 undergraduate and seven graduate degrees in a wide variety of industrial design disciplines as well as visual and applied arts. Renowned for both its ties to industry and its social impact initiatives, ArtCenter is the first design school to receive the United Nations’ Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) status. Throughout the College’s long and storied history, ArtCenter alumni have had a profound impact on popular culture, the way we live and important issues in our society.

About PST Art: Southern California’s landmark arts event, PST ART, returns in September 2024 with more than 60 exhibitions from museums and other institutions across the region, all exploring the intersections of art and science, both past and present. Dozens of cultural, scientific, and community organizations will join the latest edition, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, with exhibitions on subjects ranging from ancient cosmologies to Indigenous sci-fi, and from environmental justice to artificial intelligence. Art & Science Collide will share groundbreaking research, create indelible experiences for the public, and generate new ways of understanding our complex world. PST ART is presented by Getty. For more information about PST ART: Art & Science Collide, please visit pst.art.

Contact:
Marketing and Communications
ArtCenter College of Design

Keith Wang, Coordinator
keith.wang@artcenter.edu
626 396-2338

Anna Macaulay, Director, Campus Communications
anna.macaulay@artcenter.edu
626 396-2205