>> John Bolan: I'm John Bolan. I'm recently coming in to help
coordinate some of the Studio 99 projects. And you will probably see
more of me. This afternoon we have Laurie Frick, a data artist, has
been working as an artist for almost 10 years and deals a lot with data
about the self and self-tracking data, lives in Austin, works in New
York, and recently was featured in an article in The Atlantic, which I
believe I don't know if that was an invitation or not. It's easy to
find. It was a good portrait. In any case, I'm not going to stand up
for too long and will just say welcome to Laurie.
[applause].
>> Laurie Frick: Have you ever thought about what's known about you?
Not just if you Google yourself and it's like right here's what's
public, but some of the juicy stuff. Like every time you've ever used
your credit card. Or every video you've ever watched. Or maybe every
time you swiped your ID here on campus, every single time I work with
self-tracking data and it was a couple of years ago and what's really
known about me. Privacy was starting to heat up and I started to make
a list in self-quantified fashion, I scored it from 1 to 5 depending
how public or how private. And hundreds, I mean if you really -hundreds and hundreds of things. And every couple of days I'd think of
something else. Recently I realized Amazon knows how fast I read a
book. They know if I cheat, if I read the end. And so you can kind of
get creeped out by this, but I actually looked at this list and I
thought it's kind of like more compelling, more complex, more thorough
view of myself than I can even remember. And so it's some of this
that's got me to really see that maybe this data that everything that's
collected about you, all the surveillance, all this stuff, could start
to be a way to see the hidden part of you. So I'm on a mission to get
you to think about your data in a totally new way. So I've got 20
minutes to convince you, and let me start by explaining I'm a data
artist and I make hand-built work from data. I count it and measure it
and chop it up. A lot starts digitally. I use data viz tools. I'm
super hyperorganized and I have a background in tech. I have a whole
other life. I have been to this campus in another life. I've pitched
Bill Gates in another life. I have been here.
So let me just tell you a story, and it's kind of the story of how I
came to this, and it all started with time. It was a few years ago and
felt like something had really shifted. Everything started to feel
like all these little bits of time and there was a writer, Linda Stone.
She describes it as continuous partial attention. And it really
describes like everything was in these tiny little chunks. So I was
starting to make work based on that little bits of imagined time,
forward, backward, and I always felt like the perfect painting was 24
hours. If you think about it it's like a metaphor for a day. These
big quiet areas of sleep and then you have this perfect and you have
this ugly argument and then you have the boring part where you're
sitting in your car.
I knew if you really want to study something, you need to measure it.
So I thought, all right, I'm going to buckle down and really measure my
own time. And I started. I don't know if anybody -- it's really hard.
And it was really amateurish attempt. So I Googled it. And I found
Ben Lipkowitz. And Ben has been measuring all his time, every one of
the horizontals is 24 hours, for two years he's been putting it all on
shrine. And it was like holy shit, this looks exactly the way I
imagined time, all these little bits. I've become friends with Ben.
He's a developer his parents are neuro scientists, he has a whole
theory about why he's doing this. But I didn't even hesitate. I
scraped his data and I started to make drawings from it. Based on real
time. And then I started to chop it up, color-coded. And at the same
time I really love this. But Marco -- but I really wanted to measure
something of me. And I knew that measuring time is really hard but at
the same time I had this consumer tech new products background and I
thought all the sensors, this is all going to get much easier and my
very next -- I bought a Zio, which it's so sad they've gone out of
business. It's a little dry EEG sensor and it measures your sleep.
And I thought this is so easy. I can measure all my time right when
I'm asleep in bed. I actually don't have to do anything. And I was
really surprised as I started measuring sleep. Each one of these
verticals is a night of sleep. The first thing was sleep is not so
different, waking sleeping, it's all in these little five and ten
minute bits. It's really similar. I'd always heard that sleep cycles
were these big 90 minute chunks. It turns out no, waking, sleeping,
not so different. And I was also really taken aback. I don't really
know. It's one of these hidden things about you. You go to bed at
11:00. You wake up at seven, you think you've got eight hours of sleep
but you don't remember. I don't remember anything. And it was this
moment where I'd always thought that I was this really good sleeper.
And it was a moment where I realized I wasn't the person that I thought
I was. Turns out I'm a terrible sleeper. And it's like I'm measuring
it's real data it's about me and it turns out I'm bad at something. It
wasn't my nature. I'm accomplished, I could get -- it was a moment
where data was you kind of have to confront it, and it was sort of this
weird conflict I was sorting out. So then I got really, really
interested in sleep and realized everything good happens when you sleep
people talk about I'm a power sleeper, I only need four hours. It's
horrible. Everything good, if you're sick, it's when you get better.
If you're on a diet, it's when you metabolize carbs. If you're a
little kid, it's when you grow; it's how you reorganize long-term
memory. Everything good happens when you sleep. So I was pretty into
it. And I started to really come up with this whole system for sleep.
So I created these rules. So I had a rule system. So red is the deep
sleep. And yellow is awake. And pink is REM sleep and I took all the
light sleep which is really trash sleep, folded it up out of the way
and got rid of it. So I had all these rules like little art
algorithms. And I put it in a show in Los Angeles. And it was kind of
a big moment, because it got a big fat review in the LA Times. And
then it got picked up in New Scientist. And in Gadget and it went all
over the net and all these reviews. Zipping around. And the guys at
Zio that made this little sleep device they saw the reviews online and
they send me a little note. Laurie, love your work. What can we do to
help you? And I said send me more data. And it was the first time
that I could compare my sleep -- so before I had it vertical. I
switched it it's horizontal. Every one of those horizontal it's a
night of sleep. It's a month of sleep from each. And it was the first
time I could see other people's sleep. And I realized they were very
individual. It's like a fingerprint. So you're actually looking
purple is the really good stuff, that's deep sleep. Orange is waking
up. And you can start to see people have a very, look at this poor
guy. I mean, really, it's like -- and so I asked the research guys at
Zio, they said yeah, yeah, very identifiable. Sleep is very unique. I
can see your sleep. I know exactly who that is. And it was funny it
was right about this time I am wearing this thing on my forearm. I
have a thousand nights of sleep data. I'm wearing this thing on my
forehead. I didn't want to be the only one jumping into bed every
night so I got one for my husband. Ding. And he goes, I'm a terrible
sleeper. I have insomnia. And he wears it the very first night he
scores 140. I didn't even think it went over 100. I'm scoring like in
the 60s. So it turns out he sleeps great most of the time. And every
now and then it's horrible. But he only remembered the bad. And I
thought that's so him. It was like that's so him. Right. So he has
this huge standard deviation. I have a very narrow standard deviation.
And I thought it's not only like a fingerprint, what if it's actually
measuring his personality. Hmm. So I doubled down and decided all
right this is so cool. I'm going to measure everything. So I really
started measuring things like the sleep, like the ZIO. If I could live
in the future, particularly things that are really easy. It's living
in the time where it's just ambient data, things are going to be
collected about you. Internet of Things. Everything that I'm doing is
just going to be automatically -- so how can I live in that world. So
I've got a Wi-Fi scale. I spit in a tube. I got my DNA. I log all
the time on my computer. I put apps on my phone. Anything I could
find. And there's -- I mean this is sort of a short list otherwise I
look crazy. And I decided to use myself for research. And really pay
attention. Measuring this, how does it feel, and there's the tradition
of artists both using themselves for their work, but sometimes artists
have the, they've anticipated a scientific breakthrough where art
precedes science. And I have a fantasy that some of this is really
going to prove out. But artists can also imagine themselves through
research. They get to make stuff up, that's their job. And so I
decided to really watch, notice, pay attention, and I studied patterns
in the data. So this is it's human data. And I started to see it was
sort of these rhythms of me. Almost like a neural Fibonacci. The
patterns, the proportions of me played back to me. And at the
beginning I was really convinced I'm going to cause and effect and I'm
going to to be able to correlate this many steps. I slept this much.
I weigh this much. Even if there was a lag effect I figured I was
going to figure it all -- turns out humans are really noisy. Like
really noisy data objects. And so I kind of let go of the cause and
effect. It's very hard and I thought, well, just let me look at the
pattern. Let me just look at the patterns themselves. It's me
reflected back to me. And I started to think of them as data
portraits. Kind of jokingly call them data selfie. So I'm really -- I
realized it's sort of this familiarity, fluency to it. And I started
to see the data. Okay. Pay attention. And think of them in spaces.
Right. What if we lived with these patterns what if they covered the
walls. We live like intelligent wallpaper. What if our patterns -that pattern is something we spend time with. It's not so hard, laser
cutters, 3-D printers, fancy machines, Rucco vacuum on your walls, big
X Y-Axis. I started to think about art in terms of textures, the
physicality of it. I imagined them recyclable. It's efemoral and
update and goes against the wall and it ends up in a bucket, recycle.
I thought there was something important about getting the actual
texture of them. And there was something about this that just had this
familiarity. There's something about our patterns. We repeat the
patterns. I think the patterns of our behavior are beautiful. We go
to the same places all the time. I look at the log data. I have this
intense period in the morning when I'm online and then I have these
longer stretches in the afternoon. People always say to me, Laurie, my
patterns in my travel are so boring. I just go to work. I go home.
Maybe the grocery -- those intense areas are actually the good parts.
And so for months I had this cut drawn patterns in my studio. The
walls are filled with this stuff. And I realized I really liked it.
Felt like me. I mean, it felt recognizable. It felt human. It felt
personal. It felt soothing. It had this comfort quality. It was
recognizable. And I thought maybe that's the point. Maybe this data
is a way to see this hidden part. Like sleep. It's a way to see this
hidden part of you, the part that you just don't see, you don't notice.
You're kind of trained to ignore yourself. And maybe there's this idea
that the hidden patterns of you, all this data that's going to be
collected, that's collected now, all this data of us, gets played back
to us, abstracted. And it becomes a shortcut to mindfulness. Kind of
this crazy way. It's like a technology boosted immune system. Your
brain doesn't know the difference between meditative self reflection
and the intake of a selfie. It just knows that what it's seeing is
somehow playing back this sense of self. It's feeding the human loop.
It's you. It's grounded. And so I imagine there's a whole connection.
There's a huge scientific work around meditation and immune systems and
how immune systems are fed. I think in the future it's going to be a
really, really big deal. And so along the way people are buying this.
This stuff is in galleries. People are taking it home. It's kind of
crazy because it's my data. But sometimes it's -- in this case it's a
lobby. It's actually a team of developers and it's all the chat
metadata of a group that works together. And in the lobby it's 24
hours, all of the chat sessions, the time, the timestamp and the length
of the message, all the developers are yellows and oranges. All the
designers are shades of blue. The management are shades of gray. And
it's kind of the interaction. It's like the human data of a group of
people. But I realized in doing this that it got people to really
look. I tried to think art makes data sticky. It gets people to look
at it much, much longer. And I realized that these patterns -- they
mean something to me but I realized they mean something to other
people, too. And so I worked on and launched an iPhone app. The team
the lobby, the guys helped we made a trade. So it was a digital shop.
And Frickbits is a way to take -- I was kind of an experiment. It was
a way to take back your data and turn it into something meaningful. I
mean for the most part there's all this data collected about us but we
never get to see it. We don't know. It doesn't come back to us. And
for Frickbits, it's live. It's in the Apple store. It takes your
location data. It keeps track of it. You get extra bits for the
places that you live, all the intense colors of the places you go all
the time. And it uses that art algorithm, the rules. Some of those
rules I started creating when I did the sleep, sort of assigning colors
and sort of coming up with an algorithmic way to produce art. And it
was -- so at this point I kind of paused and I thought why? I'm
working like crazy on this. And I thought why am I doing it? Laurie,
you've got a Fitbit on, you're putting these sensors all over you,
you're trying to figure out who you are. I mean, I'm using these
external means to try to figure out who I am. In artist residencies
the artists we would sit around and analyze other artists work to sort
of decode them or analyze them. This actually works for you guys, too.
Looking at what people work on it says a lot about them. And then I
thought I'm using all these external means to figure out who, like who
am I? But I think we all do this. It used something external to
figure out who we are. I completely changed jobs. But you move. You
get a new place. You get a new apartment. You get a new boyfriend.
You change cities. I mean, you're trying to use these external means
to try to figure out who you are. Do I like it? Do they like me? Do
I like this new place? I mean, you can't know. And I thought well
maybe this is it. It's the way data starts to see this hidden part of
us, a way to reveal the part that's really hard to know about
ourselves. There's this really, really wonderful book called strangers
to ourselves. Timothy Wilson. And he describes the you, the other
you, the you that your friends get to see, the one that you don't get
to see. And so you think well maybe, right, maybe what would, so maybe
all this data comes back to me. What would my data say about -- what
would it say about you? You start thinking okay what if I got all my
data back, my sleep, is it going to be like my husband who swings
wildly or your data if it measures sort of something about you what
would it say about you? I just think that it's this really compelling
story, interesting possibility to use my data to understand and answer
this question that I've been trying to sort with, who am I. So what if
I could figure out a way, take back my data, what if I could get back
all my data and not just understand who I am but the possibility of who
I can be? It's like how am I feeling? Am I up? Am I down? Do I have
MIMO Joe today. I'm super super interested in data's ability to
predict. Not just how am I feeling now and the data showing me here's
my stress level at this moment but how am I going to feel tomorrow at
11:00. It's almost like this weird smart drug where what if I can know
that at a certain time in the future I'm really, really on, and I just
am so curious about what data could be, and I start to think of it as
this irresistible possibility. It's funny, human data, data, the
Fitbit, all these companies that are doing self-tracking data they keep
describing it in terms of health or fitness, very Calvinist purposeful,
what's the purpose, what's the purpose of the data, we want to get
people to walk more. But I don't think it's about that. I think that
human data is going to be, and it really is about identity. Who am I?
So if data is a way to get to know ourselves, if data is the way I'm
going to figure out who I am, why am I running from it? Why would I
hide? I say take back your data. Turn it into art. Thank you.
[applause].
John Bolan: Do we have questions?
>> Laurie Frick:
about this.
I hope.
This is where I'm dying to talk to you guys
>>: So you alluded a little bit to cause and effect. But then you
sort of dropped a little bit. Do you think doing all this work looking
at your data has changed you, in other words, has changed the data? So
do you feel like there's been a few [indiscernible] or has it just
been ->> Laurie Frick: No, I think it's a fair question. If you measure
yourself, what changes. I mean, one of the things because I've
measured so many things for so long I don't stress over it short term.
But the thing -- I mean, there's a few things I can tell in my
behavior. Like stepping on a scale you manage your weight by having
the data. Just the presence of the data makes the difference. One of
the things I learned about sleep is it's kind of anti intuitive. The
earlier you go to bed, the better you sleep. People think if I'm
really tired and I go to bed late I'll sleep better. You'll actually
sleep better if you go to bed early. I also know just kind of
intuitively now if I stand longer during the day, if I stand in my
studio, not only can I get 10,000 steps in, but I sleep better. I
mean, so there's a level of self-knowledge that you just sort of start
to intuitively understand. I'm not consciously writing down, I'm more
productive. But I think the knowledge and the exposure to the data
subtly affects you. But I understand -- but I don't think -- I
honestly don't think that's the point as much as the sense that art can
show you back your data in a way that you care about.
>>: I have an extension of that question. If feedback is a big part
of this experience, we've seen something like wallpaper, which is
relatively fixed, do you think you'll expand into animation? Or other
forms that change? So that there could be a kind of feedback in
something that's not many months or iterating on many different data
snapshots or more continuously.
>> Laurie Frick: How do you get the data to be real time and update?
Part of me wants to do that with physical work. So the physicality of
it. I mean, I'm really -- I'm kind of a mind that it's like a shortcut
just to go to a pixelated screen. But if there was a way to maybe
project it on to something bumpy or have a way to have the physicality
of the work updated all the time, I'm serious, I think it should be
recent and current but I'm still figuring out a way to make that
physical and make it -- I mean, so could it be interactive and move,
absolutely.
>>: I understand a lot of the pieces you use have a very judicious use
of color, if I can use that term and also numbers appear a lot. Kind
of curious where those come from, where in your work?
>> Laurie Frick: Some of the pieces are based on walking, tracking,
and I'll make drawings as I go. And I'll look at the Fitbit and
what -- it's like steps from that time or numbers. I also have this
weird sense that the things that you see all the time, some things you
forget. Some things you remember. It sort of seeps in. And so the
numbers come from that. The amount of stuff you're exposed to and the
parts of it that you actually remember. I mean, the judicious -- I
actually think I'm making stuff pretty bright. I mean, I'm trying to
inject as much color as people can stand in the pieces.
>>: They vary -- like the background piece on the wall and some of the
other ones in the lobby look very, very comfortable, but then some of
them especially with wood I notice -- there was just a little bit here
and there. But I was kind of curious what your inspiration -- was that
coming from something in the data to you or was that coming from how
you felt about ->> Laurie Frick: One of the pieces with the data they were about time
and it was winter. Sometimes it's about place and the color relates to
the sense of time of that place. But I also have this theory. A lot
of color is what people like about color is based on the fluency of
what people have seen before. I mean, people's music tastes and their
food tastes come from what they have tasted or heard early on. I
thought color taste comes from what you experienced or seen. And I
started realizing super saturated PhotoShopped color, it's so much
media. There's so much media now that's not nature colors, it's way
more. And I almost can't get enough. In fact, sometimes I'll make
stuff and I'll have to paint over the top of it or take it back to dial
it back because I like color that's, I want to take the saturation knob
and move it to 11.
>>: You spoke about how data awareness is short for mindfulness. And
seemed like you've learned how to read data and how that expresses how
you feel, but you must have done that relationally with your husband
and other people seen their data and sort of influenced how you
experienced them or wonder if you could speak to that, like when you
saw other people's data how did it influence your thoughts about that?
>> Laurie Frick: It's like now I'm getting this freudian shrink in
sight. Somebody asked me once, it was like all right if I'm really
super stressed can I see somebody else's data to calm me down. Or
there's also the question of if you're really mad and the person that
you're talking to sort of meets you with that same, you sort of calm
down as opposed to somebody patronizing you, it's something -- so I've
always thought like I don't know the answers to this. It's like what
part of that experience or feedback to yourself do you want to get like
for like or like for different. I think the question of looking at
other people's data, I'm not -- I don't know. I mean, yeah, I don't
know. It's a fair question. I don't know. I don't know. It's sort
of like the answer to the universe. So some of it I honestly -- I'm
not sure.
>>:
Your data and it's fascinating.
But --
>> Laurie Frick: The truth is I probably spent -- so here's, for
example, Ben Lipkowitz, there's one guy and I've probably spent
hundreds of hours with his data. And I've gotten so I really like his
data. Well, it varies. It goes for years and years. There was this
whole one section -- because he also sleeps on a 26-hour clock. So his
patterns go on a diagonal, which is interesting. And then there was
this one chunk for about six months that he was getting up at the same
time. He's a software developer. At one time I said to him did you
get a job? Why are you -- he goes no, no, I was on a bike trip I had
to get up when the sun came up, I was sleeping in a tent. So there's
something about him and he has an interesting variety to it. And then
I've been doing these pieces based on time use data and they're
anonymous people and some of them I go through it and oh no, I don't
like this guy. It's like blech. So there is a response to some of the
time-based data. And it's interesting because there's I think to me
I'm sitting here sort of answering it like I haven't thought about this
before. There's a certain amount of variety that makes the person
interesting. And maybe the thing like you marry your opposite.
Because I'm pretty steady. And the thing with my husband, this, oh
yeah, oh yeah, love him. [laughter].
>>:
I almost feel a self-help book coming on.
>> Laurie Frick: Oh God don't make me -- I tried hard not to step in
new age -- because I think it's hooey but I think there's a scientific
connection.
>>:
No, no, I didn't mean that new age --
>> Laurie Frick:
It was like please don't take me there.
>>:
What I mean is the idea is.
>>:
Therapeutic.
>>: There would be rules for what you want your data to look like in
terms of you just said something about variety. Does ->> Laurie Frick:
Yeah.
>>: Does variety along certain axes indicate someone who is better
able to say deal with every day life or something like that. I'm not
suggesting a book, but it's that idea ->> Laurie Frick: Like self. You know heart rate variability. Do
people -- you actually want highly variable. So it could be that what
makes you human has a certain amount of variety in terms of time, heart
rate, breathing.
>>: But you could work on other parameters. Variety, intensity in
certain cases, if you go through life and there's no fluctuation in
your data at all.
>> Laurie Frick:
>>:
You're a robot.
Effectively, yes.
>> Laurie Frick: You're a robot. You know what I love about this
group, because I talk about this a lot. And usually the very first
groups are like oh my God we are not data. We can't reduce humans.
There's the mystery of being human. But nobody's asked that. This
group is like data, oh, yeah, because people will say because you can
be -- I think we are going to be statistically understood. I think
there's a point where we'll be known. Yeah, yeah. If what you're
asking, there's going to be norms.
>>: This is kind of a -- my mind was going I'm curious if any of this,
you found it interesting, but is there a case where it's telling you
something you wish you didn't know about yourself. Because this is
probably the response you alluded to we need a certain fiction about
ourselves in order to maintain our sanity. And sometimes the truth is
too stark and too depressing. I watch TV way more than I thought I
did.
>> Laurie Frick: You know, I started tracking my time, like really
tracking -- I turned a couple of apps on my phone and I had Manic Time
running on my laptop. Then I started keeping a grid. And I was trying
to get at things I did simultaneously and one of the things that did
surprise me -- because people always talk about oh God you look at your
phone too much. I realize most of the time on my phone I was reading
stuff. Maybe actually I felt better about it. But I think there's you
don't hear your own heartbeat. You barely -- I think what you see in
the mirror is not -- there's all kinds of things that you just cope
with, yeah, just, yeah. Please.
>>: Kind of back to work side of it a little bit. I'm curious,
there's some here and some in your presentation, this has both, this
has both but a lot of the work you showed you have either color or
extrusions of some sort coming off a surface of the wall typically.
And sometimes you have these frame that you're seeing through that have
data punched through.
>> Laurie Frick:
Negative, positive.
>>: Yes. And I'm curious what leads you one direction or another and
how do you think about those two kind of -- they're pretty different
expressions, right. I'm just curious how you, what do you think about
that?
>> Laurie Frick: So the thing that makes it live in the world of art
for me is there's the experience of the data and then the data itself.
And there's data Viz that tends to take the data and represent it
really accurate. And I tried to stay -- I showed a few examples that I
actually work from like the real data. But I try to find something in
the experience like when I did the walking it was the time of year,
what the color of the light was. Sometimes I wore these selfie cameras
and did pictures as I went and looked at all the images. You can run
the time lapse. I wore my iPhone around my neck for a while. I would
look for something in it. It's funny, because the sleep -- I took the
bad sleep and folded it out of the way and made it missing, but then
other times I would make like the time with stuff that would poke out
would be something that I felt had more emotion. So I mean I used the
same metaphor to mean completely different things, but I was trying to
get at like it's almost like you've got color, size, I was trying to
find more dimensionality to play with.
>>: Is there anything along those lines that leads you towards, if you
will, the negative space of these sort of frames and the panels that
you look through? Is there anything that typically leads you that way
or is that just whatever the spirit, however the spirit goes, what
you're trying to express?
>> Laurie Frick: You know, all the -- well, a lot of it was because I
was playing -- I belong to a laser cooperative. I get endless amounts
of laser time. I just experimented with laser cutting and could I draw
with a laser cutter and they're hand made with a laser cutter. I mean,
I haven't -- I don't have a -- you can tell, I don't know. One of the
things I did figure out I've tried to sort out how to represent bad
data. It's different than just -- it's something you don't want to
know but every now and then things are not okay or I used to -- I
measured for a year and a half if I had an upset stomach, one was good,
five was a bad and you just score it every day. And I went back and
looked at the data and thought how do I represent those 5s, and I took
the data and stacked it. When something went bad, because I'm that
really tidy person, I would let it spill out. And I thought if it was
live and I was getting the data real time, I'd probably could make my
stomach feel better in order to stack that stuff up neat. My desire
for neatness was so high. When I looked at your office I was so
horrified. [laughter] my house is clean. And I thought it's kind of a
secondary way to represent data to give it to them not just smack them
like you're bad, but it's messy. And if you want to clean it up you
might have the dial to switch it the other way.
>>:
I'm a pilar.
>> Laurie Frick:
>>:
I know where everything is.
>> Laurie Frick:
>>:
But that is memory --
As soon as I organize it I don't know where it is.
>> Laurie Frick:
time-based.
>>:
Exactly.
No, no, because chronologically, it's historically
It's just bananas.
>> Laurie Frick:
And the stuff on the floor?
>>: I know where everything is. [laughter] because even that has a
location and it has something associated with that location.
>> Laurie Frick: You've read about the rats in the maze that scored
location-based where they are. This is in your neuro transmitters.
>>:
It's like the rats nim.
[laughter].
>>: Actually relates to my question. Feels like maybe at least when
you started a lot of this was representing your data to yourself. But
when you think about the space like data viz on one side and something
really abstractly art on the other, there's a big tradeoff in terms of
how interpretable it is. I wonder if you thought about how would you
present somebody's data to them based on their particular personality.
So would it be -- if I commissioned you to do something with my data
and you knew me, what were the things that you would think about or
would it vary?
>> Laurie Frick: It's like the art algorithm of the future. Art can
be literally, could be coded to be a learning algorithm with a set of
rules that I don't even have to intervene.
does it measure?
It makes art for you.
What
>>: In these particular instances, at least for yourself, other things
you mention the spilling out effect, are there other things like that
that you kind of code it for your understanding?
>> Laurie Frick: It's almost what you're trying to get at it's like
the amount of humanness. How much hand, you know, how much edge, where
do you -- it's in that super messy, super tidy, right, it's sort of
mechanical, how mechanical, how handmade. That's some of it. I had
this project that I started working on, and it's part way through, was
to be able to look at the person and gather data about them that then
would feed into the algorithm, the speed they walked, how fast they
signed their name. The pitch of their voice. I thought there was
something interesting in people's their basic proportions. You can
measure like people's basic sort of just the amount of this to the
amount of this based on the proportions of their hands. Hands have a
lot to say about people. It was like all right what are the things
that I can very objectively measure about you repeatedly and use that
to feed into the algorithm. And some of it is personal. The speed
thing or the pitch thing. And it was like the colors that they wore
and one of the things you can start to gather about somebody that are
unconscious choices about them but are very insightful. So how do you
start to make yours -- I also imagine in the future, you can have like
the super abstraction or the super realism. You could start to make
stuff, I don't want any, it's like the filter in PhotoShop, hypersharp.
A little bit fuzzy. I think there's something in it. I don't have
all -- in some of this I don't even figure out in my own head until
later I realize there was something that was causing me to make
something in a certain way that felt right and I sort of analyzed why.
Artists will tell you sometimes they figure it out while they're making
it or soon after they've made it and they don't know why.
>>:
Have you done this for your husband?
>> Laurie Frick:
>>:
Made something?
Yeah.
What has been his response and interaction with it?
>> Laurie Frick: He likes some better than others. What was his
interaction. I did a lot of his sleep stuff. It's possible he didn't
tell me, I mean I'm sitting here he goes honey I like it, thanks. He
knows enough not to say too much maybe.
>>: I guess to combine two questions, then, when you did do -- in a
sense your husband was new in a way. You produced something for
someone else.
>> Laurie Frick:
Then I sold it.
[laughter].
>>:
Did it look like --
>> Laurie Frick:
You laugh.
It's all gone.
>>: Was there different colors you used, different textures, different
materials.
>> Laurie Frick: Uh-huh, you're right, there were. His colors were
duller, not because he's dull. But he wears tan and gray, sort of a
common color. I didn't make him as bright. Some of it I don't even
think I thought about it.
>>:
But it still came out that way?
>> Laurie Frick:
Yes.
>>: So have you thought about using government [indiscernible] two
hours based on 911 calls, like all input publicly available?
>> Laurie Frick: Yeah, yeah, because I really like data that's sort of
human-based. Sort of that about individual people can you create
portraiture of individual -- because once up go into the line of data
it's bottomless.
>>: Like identities, [indiscernible] like you could sort of picture
them.
>> Laurie Frick: It's partly where I started using time use data from
timeuse.org and I wrote to the people at University of Oxford, a time
use database. And I've been gathering data that was anonymously
gathered about how people spent their time. But I haven't looked, like
911 calls, yeah, I haven't -- part of it is it's the data is
overwhelming.
>>:
So I think we'll go with Banker's question and then end.
>>: So when I look at the physical manifestation of the data that
you've made, obviously there's great many artistic and aesthetic
qualities to it. And as you're creating it, do you ever -- I don't
even know how to say it, do you ever worry about how much better the
information needs to know to understand the piece, because there's
obviously ->> Laurie Frick:
Yeah, yeah.
>>: If you go to a space and
about it purely from artistic
data, and do you like -- like
direction and how much do you
you look at this, you can just think
perspective. I don't know if it's about
how much of the design goes into that
think you gain by knowing the
information, this is my sleep data? And my secondary question is how
do you actually convey to people or do you convey to people that it is
your sleeping data?
>> Laurie Frick: That's a really good question I have a show right now
in New York and I put legends in the show. For one of the first times.
And I used to put little clues, because if I was at the beginning, I
thought it's enough that I know what it is and I would name it
something that would kind of be a clue. Or I would put dates in it or
I would do little things because I thought it was kind of cheeky for me
to know about what it was but not so much for other people. Now I've
decided to start being more straightup. I do these seven days of time
use made out of leather and I hand draw give them exactly what the
colors are of what each of the categories of time. And I show what's
happening in the thing. And I thought it would ruin it, because it's
like kachunk, kachunk, and actually people like -- so it seems to help.
So I've started creating these little legends. And what's kind of
weird as I look at maps and other things I always read the legend. I
want to know. I decided that the legends are part of it and I've
started to explain more. Yeah, excellent question. These are like
little baseball cards, they're business cards but honestly think of it
more as a party favor. It's like you get -- they come in different
ones. There's a ton of them.
>>:
Collect them all.
>> Laurie Frick:
Collect them all.
>>:
Thank you all.
John Bolan:
>> Laurie Frick:
[applause]
This was great.
Thank you, Laurie.
Thank you.