Shùjùxiàn 數據線
Art + Data Exhibit
Mozilla Festival, London, 2018

Can we muddle the spatial properties of our data traces through digital artefacts? What do transnational collaborations with human as well as non-human entities listening in? Shùjùxiàn 數據線 “drinking from the data lines” consisted of a set of gif-artworks featured at the Art x Data exhibit at Mozilla Festival with V&A and Tate Digital Learning. I developed each piece from a series of co-creative encounters with makers located across China and the U.K., where a data grapevine of donated ’stickers’ was exchanged to build a colourful collection of mp4 images and memes commonly shared amongst the 1 billion users of China’s WeChat messaging platform. Our chats were consensually monitored with recording apps, and then remixed into multimedia artworks using other apps, making their contribution chains difficult to trace. Interrogating what it means to build networked art across digital platforms that may be monitored at any time, Shùjùxiàn reflects on the surveillance dynamics of transnational collaboration, and sends web crawlers on a playful hunt through glitched medias.