1. OUR LIVES IN DATA
SHELDON PAQUIN
CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE EXHIBITIONS

2. WHAT IS BIG DATA? BEING IN AN OFFICE BORING MATHS - NOPE
These are actual responses from focus groups that were asked about big data
MATHS - NOPE
THE DEVIL’S WORK

3. Most of the research that went into this project involved attending lectures and conferences – this was one actual slide from one of the conferences, and from this, it’s easy to see where the focus groups got their ideas about big data. This algorithm tracks the spread of the flu through the United States.

4. This slide is a representation of ‘face swapping’ software on apps like snapchat.

5. OUR LIVES IN DATA: THE DEVIL’S WORK SHELDON PAQUIN
CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE EXHIBITIONS
…which brings us back to the exhibition as a whole and how we were meant to tackle such a complex and dense subject matter and make it accessible.

6. FOCUS GROUP PARTICIPANTS WERE INTERESTED IN
Who is in control of data
What can be predicted about them
What happens when predictions are wrong
What predictions are made as a society
How we feed into a data loop
What data we’re generating that we don’t know about
Practical implications and uses of data
Responses from visitors at front-end research stage

7. The exhibition was up July 2016 until September 2017
The exhibition was up July 2016 until September Going in, we knew 18% of our audience didn’t like big data or thought that it had any bearing on their lives – we also knew about 3% of people felt the same way coming out of the exhibition. These are the interpretation choices that made the exhibition so effective

8. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS OF DATA BLENDING FAMILIAR WITH ALIEN
Big data at its core is very unfamiliar. We combined the curiosity of seeing ‘behind the scenes’ with communicating the science of it – looking inside an Oyster card, seeing a visualisation of human DNA, etc.

9. USING DATA TO TELL STORIES
Data isn’t interesting, but stories are. Every data set comes with its own stories, so we made sure that the data presented opportunities for the visitor to ‘read’ it and come away with a human story.

10. EMBRACE THE CONTROVERSY
People immediately associate big data with surveillance and privacy infringements. We knew that if we didn’t address this head on, we lose credibility in our audience, so we embraced it instead. Though we were trying to demystify and humanise big data, we still invited visitors to have their faces analysed by an algorithm to guess their gender, age, and emotional state. We purposefully ‘dumbed down’ the software so that it would be more playful instead of creepy.

11. EMBRACE THE CONTROVERSY
We also gave visitors the opportunity to share their thoughts on big data and privacy. We kept their responses to feed back to research groups.

12. ON GALLERY DEBATE
The ‘debate’ that we hosted on gallery was interesting – it showed, for example, that people are much more willing to give up their data when a practical application is involved, rather than simply living a ‘data liberal’ life. Let’s have a go at some of the questions that we featured in the exhibition now to see where you stand compared with your peers.

13. SCHOOLS SHOULD HAVE ACCESS TO STUDENTS’ FACEBOOK PAGES TO IDENTIFY DEPRESSION

14. DOCTORS SHOULD HAVE ACCESS TO THEIR PATIENTS’ FOOD PURCHASE DATA

15. I SHOULD RECEIVE VOUCHERS IN THE POST CONNECTED TO VIDEOS I WATCH ONLINE

16. FOOD PURCHASE DATA SHOULD BE USED TO SEE HOW MANY PEOPLE BELONG TO EACH RELIGION IN THE COUNTRY

17. POLICE SHOULD HAVE A DATABASE OF EVERYONE’S DNA

18. POLICE SHOULD HAVE A DATABASE OF EVERYONE’S DNA TO IDENTIFY SUSPECTS AT CRIME SCENES

19. OUR LIVES IN DATA
SHELDON PAQUIN
CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE EXHIBITIONS