Technology is woven so seamlessly into modern life that we rarely stop to think about it. We know that if we get lost, our phone’s GPS will give us directions. If we text someone a question, they can text back with the answer immediately. Want to know what’s going on literally anywhere in the world? Just take your phone out of your pocket. That often unexamined nexus between technology and human behavior is what particularly intrigues artist, educator, and recent Annenberg School for Communication Ph.D. Roopa Vasudevan.
In June, one of Vasudevan’s ongoing art projects, dataDouble, went on display at the National Liberty Museum’s newest exhibition, “Data Nation: Democracy in the Age of AI.”
dataDouble is an interactive work that explores humanity’s connection to data and how our relationships with machines affect our behavior and sense of self.
Vasudevan conceived of the project during her first semester at Annenberg back in 2018, in a class taught by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, then a visiting scholar at Annenberg’s Center for Media at Risk and now a professor at Simon Fraser University. Chun later became a member of Vasudevan’s dissertation committee.
“We were looking at data through a critical approach and really thinking about the impact of data collection, categorization, and analysis on technology and society,” Vasudevan says. She wanted to find a way to visualize that impact, and soon, dataDouble was born.
This story is by Hailey Reissman. Read more at Annenberg School for Communication.
