#thickear

PINK SHEET METHOD

How nonsensical is data collection? Check out the Pink Sheet Method, a playful way of getting people to think about what happens with their data.

By filling out this form, in triplicate, with meaningless acronyms and non-sensical logic, the artists invite the public to take part in the big data shuffle. Thought about as a three step art event, "Pink Sheet Method, is a product of Thickear, an art collective started in London in 2012. More info can be found here http://thickear.co.uk/

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From their website:

“Pink Sheet Method”, encourages the public to judge the value of their own data against the value of the art work itself.  thickear’s triptychal response to Data as Culture involves procedures of data collection, exhibition, re-examination and validation. Taking place over three locations, Pink Sheet Method investigates economies of data exchange, and considers how transaction is employed to create perceived but oblique value.  PSM brokers data through exchange, accruing and rendering. The credibility and limitations of analytics – or data fracking – is questioned through a series of performed, authoritative gestures that transform information into commodity and/or knowledge. 

In Dialogue | Geoff Howse from Thickear / Ministry of Measurement

Can you give a quick overview of your project?

GH: The Ministry of Measurement was an installation/performance, transforming the Barbican’s giant cloakroom area into a sinister bureaucratic data collection centre. Through sound, visual cues, performance and an eye for the Barbican’s Brutalist aesthetic, members of the public were coerced into collecting bizarre measurement data, which was duly fed into the eleven enormous databanks, printed and hung up as lengthy data sheets.

A study of the subjectivity of data readings, the intricacies of measurement and our inherent suspicions about data exchange, The Ministry of Measurement was also an homage to classic sci-fi and dystopian film and literature, visual echoes of which are abundant within the Barbican’s architecture and interior design.

As the work developed we consulted with Ulrich Atz from the Open Data Institute and Michael de Podesta from the National Physical Laboratory on the subjectivity of data readings and the intricacies of measurement and the idea to present a fictional bureaucratic organisation grew from the setting and our research. We also collaborated with Anthony Evans to provide programming for our receipt printer and Daniel Lopez to build and support a MoM website.

How did you find the process of working within or with the Barbican Centre?

GH: Inspirational on many levels, tiring and occasionally poignant. Firstly, we felt honoured to have the opportunity to present work in an wonderful institution, wonderful both as a cultural centre and aesthetically. We wanted to present work that was sympathetic to both aspects, as well as to Thickear as a collective.

We thoroughly enjoyed working with the Barbican staff who helped greatly to facilitate the work and who did everything they could to aid us, personally I can't thank them enough, yet the irony of pushing a work concerned with bureaucracy through all the necessary levels of bureaucracy was not lost on us.

Finally, the experience of 'working' at the ministry day to day, in the dim cathedral of the lower level, was often as tedious and tiring as any administrative job. Interacting with the public was often deeply enjoyable yet observing from afar the lives of some who through necessity find the Barbican their daytime sanctuary, was very sad.

How would you define the word or concept ‘hack’?

GH: An intervention. A re purposing for some use other than that which intended. Unofficial, tacked-on, crude yet effective.

What are your main influences or references for the project that visitors would be interested in?

GH: Before we heard about Hack the Barbican we had become interested in data sonification and how information can be processed to produce supposedly representational sound. Our research had revealed how subjective that transfer can be; essentially any data can produce any output. As we initially walked around the Barbican building we were conscious that we wanted to create work that was sympathetic to the buildings aesthetic but was also a re-purposing of the space in the spirit of the HTB festival. When we looked at the cloakroom space, we were struck by its symmetrical beauty and epic proportions. It was pertinent to us that was here was a space where another type of transfer usually took place, an exchange of item for code, with eleven gargantuan banks of data storage.

As mentioned The Ministry of Measurement was also an homage to classic sci-fi and dystopian film and literature - 1984, Brazil, THX 1138, Kubrick etc. We didn't read, watch or research any of these any further than the residues they have already left in our cultural consciences, yet the references I think were clear.

  If you could re-imagine the structure of Hack the Barbican in your chosen medium, how would it manifest? Is it possible to articulate this?

GH: In many ways Hack the Barbican follows a modern mode of thought reflected in open data and open source networks. Here the Barbican is the code that has been ‘opened’ and all comers have been allowed access. Participants do not need to have already had successful careers to be involved and they do not need to stick to the usual designated ‘art’ or ‘performance’ stages within the Barbican. They only need the drive and ability to make their vision happen. This is a very interesting direction for an organisation such as the Barbican to take.

In our collective we both do and don't follow this structure. We believe in collaboration, the free flow of ideas and talents, and we open our doors to others. Yet we decide when those doors open and to whom. So we could be much more open -  but do we want this? Well, if we follow the HtB model, I guess it it isn't up to us to decide.

About Thickear:

The Ministry of Measurement : A Brief Overview

“Training in the information society results in the production of papers”.

Scott Lash, Critique of Information (2002)

  To work at the Ministry of Measurement, you require formal training in the societal shift in manufacturing activity from material processing to information processing. These concerns are taken with utmost seriousness and candidates hypnotised by our collective demands for complex visualisations of data need not apply. Discreet professionalism combined with a coherent yet critical knowledge of information manufacture is demanded from all employees at the Ministry. Those with experience of working in a laboratory setting are encouraged to apply, as are those with a background in working with abstract outputs. Full training is provided to completely engage contemporary data audiences.  

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A data centre has emerged, staged in the cloakroom of the Barbican. Conceived by collective Thickear, the Ministry of Measurement has intercepted the spatial statistics of the Barbican. The Ministry are gathering data from visitors based on a range of variables - defined distances measured by a checklist of actions such as hopping, striding and shuffling. This information is then fed into a system designed to rationalise our corporeal relationship with the Barbican. The output is sonic and paper based. Contemporary data audiences are not accustomed to material or ephemeral statistical feedback. Here, data visualisation becomes abstracted to the point of futility. Questions are raised about why and how we present this information and to what purpose sophisticated visualisation serves.

Under the dimmed lights of the hacked cloakroom, the gathering of our information takes on a slightly more sinister guise.  Clinically dressed people ask visitors to collect data for no apparent purpose or motive. The Ministry of Measurement directly questions why we so freely donate our data for free to faceless sources, information as a medium or material, information as pure refuse and the trend for hyperactive visualisations, which track almost every global experience. The cynical can relate to information as refuse and articulate ideas around the disinformed information society described by Lash over a decade ago in Critique of Information (2002). According to Lash, pollutants and societal effluence (garbage) don’t just describe the material world, they now haunt the sphere of information. Perhaps Lash was pre-empting the consequences of our current information economy, propelled by a growing compulsion to store data on all that is static, fluid or ephemeral. Rather than add to the digital flow of information refuse, the Ministry of Measurement materialises the data handed over freely on paper. Due to a societal awareness of environmental issues, the use of paper in this context draws attention to information garbage in a tangible and traditionally archival way.  Similarly, the absurdity of gathering and processing data is highlighted by the theatrical setting and the actions that visitors are asked to perform. Over the timeline of the project visitors will shape the output of the ministry but, like the work itself, they are merely adding an alteration to a pre designed architecture.