A lecture held in the wake of the Microsoft Design Expo 2013 on (Big) Data Gardening, its history, and its far-reaching implications.

1. The Fine Art
of
Data Gardening
microsoft design expo mini symposium
tu/e eindhoven, february 18, 2013

2. A society grows great when old
men plant trees whose shade they
know they shall never sit in.
greek proverb

3. data gardener
avant la lettre
(1)
1 , 9 3 9 , 9 6 6
Carolus Linnaeus, 1732 (number of identified species as of 2010)

4. The global data supply reached 2.8
zettabytes, or 2.8 trillion GB in 2012.
Just 0.5% of this is used for analysis.
Digital Universe Study, 2012

5. “If you asked me to describe the rising
philosophy of the day, I’d say it is data-ism.”
We now have the ability to gather huge amounts of data.
This ability seems to carry with it certain cultural assumptions:
that everything that can be measured should be measured;
that data is a transparent and reliable lens that allows us to filter out
emotionalism and ideology; that data will help us do remarkable things.
David Brooks / The Philosophy of Data

6. data gardener
avant la lettre
(2)

7. A rm a nd S c h u l t h es s
( 19 0 1 - 1 9 7 2 )
Armand Schulthess

8. Armand Schulthess

9. Armand Schulthess

10. Armand Schulthess

11. Armand Schulthess
(legend written by
Ingeborg Lüscher)

12. Armand Schulthess

13. Armand Schulthess

14. Armand Schulthess

15. Armand Schulthess

16. InfoArcadia, Stroom Den Haag, 2000

17. data gardener
avant la lettre
(3)
Thomas Malthus
shades of the malthusian catastrophe

18. n o un s
Brandon Martin-Anderson et al, (MIT) - Interactive Census Dotmap with 454,064,098 dots - one for each person in North America, using 2010 census data

19. n oun s w it h b e h av i o r
Brandon Martin-Anderson et al, (MIT) - Interactive Census Dotmap with 454,064,098 dots - one for each person in North America, using 2010 census data

21. 0

28. ronald van tienhoven - commemorative euro coin ‘400 years Netherlands-Manhattan’ (2009) - verso

29. ronald van tienhoven - commemorative euro coin ‘400 years Netherlands-Manhattan’ (2009) - recto

30. ev oc a ti v e n o u n s
Edward Rolf Tufte
from: Envisioning Information

31. da t a - i n k r at i o
(coined by Edward Rolf Tufte)

32. d a ta -pi xe l r ati o

33. Sergey Semonov - multi-stichted ultra-high resolution aerial panorama of Central Park and environs

34. "The most interesting aspect for me, composing exclusively with
patterns, is that there is not one organizational procedure more
advantageous than another, perhaps because no one pattern ever
takes precedence over the others. The compositional concentration
is solely on which pattern should be reiterated and for how long."
Morton Feldman / Why Patterns?

35. 1923 2008
4535 Time magazine covers, 1923-2008 - Lev Manovich and Jeremy Douglass / Software Studies Initiative (softwarestudies.com) / 2009-2010

37. w h at > if
( m eans of ide n t i f i c a t i o n )

38. i f > t he n
(m eans of em po w e r m e n t )

39. fi n
© r o n al d v a n t i e n h o v e n 2 0 1 3