The Reader.

The Reader is a large six foot data visualization sculpture of the artist Stanza wearing a hoodie reading a book. The sculpture becomes a pulsing algorithmic heartbeat of living data. It is made with custom made digital software and hardware generating live events inside the sculpture. The Reader is a machine for the systems age. The Reader is a data visualisation sculpture about artificial intelligence and machine learning. Data is taking over our bodies and making its very own nervous system. The artwork uses open data and new technologies to question audiences’ experiences of real-time events. We live in a world of infobesity, we are bombarded with information that is made malleable inside the artwork, it is shaped to give it meaning. The data body acts to reposition a future view of ourselves when embedded technologies will become part of our everyday lives. In the future there will be different varieties of man and machine all embedded with different levels of technology and therefore experience and knowledge.

What will happen in the future when embedded chips in our bodies have access to the world's information data and knowledge? Who will have access to this world of data and how will you know who does? What happens when AI and machine intelligence becomes part of our human fabric?

The artwork explores new ways of thinking about life, the emergence and interaction within public space. This interactive system is based on a 3d scan of the artist's body. After scanning the artist's body the file was modelled into the shapes that are cut. The whole construction is then assembled like a jigsaw. Over one hundred micro display screens show data pulsing through the body. The artwork took over one year to design and make.

Adaptations: The sculpture (V1) is reading all the books published since 1952 from an open source data set via British Library. The Reader software system can also be adapted and customized to read financial data, dna data, live news feeds, and twitter feeds.

NOTE. It was adapted for Speculum Artrium, Trbovlje Slovenia 2022 where 3000 school children where asked a series of questions. The answers where formed into a 40 page "Poem for the Future" that The Reader read during the exhibition .

Measurements. Details. 225CM BY 84CM BY 80 CM WEIGHT 40 KG

Available for touring and for exhibitions. If you would like to exhibit this artwork let me know.

Exhibitions.

MEET Center, Milano. Italy 2024
Deutsches Museum, Nuremberg. Germany 2022
Speculum Artium, Trbovlje Slovenia 2022
MAMM, Moscow. Russia 2022
Museum Of The Future Enschede, Netherlands 2022
Salisbury Cathedral UK 2020
Waterstones Book Store London 2019
Future Festival Nesta UK London 2018
Spectre Festival Aberdeen UK 2018
Bury Art Museum UK 2017
FACT Foundation for Art and Creative Technology Liverpool UK 2017
EMAF European Media Art Festival Osnabruck Germany 2017
Kinetica Art Fair London UK 2017
NTTA Update New Technological Art Award Gent. Belgium 2016
Milton Keynes Library UK 2015

SEE VIDEO The Reader By Stanza

Technology:

The artwork consists of:- 100 led matrix displays and custom designed and manufactured PCB boards, custom made cables, custom made and modeled perspex body, base box and laser cut metal plate, arduinos PCB boards, power sockets and custom power box.

Commission: The original commission was to use the real time library data and to log each book taken out of the library via a newly created API and read these books as they get taken out. In the end they wouldn't agree to the live data feed and the The sculpture (V1) is reading all the books published since 1952 from and open source data set via British Library.

Reading

Reading is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols in order to construct or derive meaning. It is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information and ideas. Reading requires creativity and critical analysis. Readers use a variety of reading strategies to assist with decoding (to translate symbols into sounds or visual representations of speech) and comprehension. Readers may use context clues to identify the meaning of unknown words. Readers integrate the words they have read into their existing framework of knowledge or schema (schemata theory). Other types of reading are not speech based writing systems, such as music notation or pictograms. The common link is the interpretation of symbols to extract the meaning from the visual notations or tactile signals (as with Braille). Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_%28process%29

The Future Body
"The only future I can see," says the cybernetics professor Kevin Warwick at the University of Reading, England, "is one where there are perhaps humans as we know them today, but we also have the cyborg entity — the part human, part machine, with all different varieties."

Deutsches Muesum 2023 Nuremberg Germany