Associate Professor Kelly Thompson from Concordia University launched her work, Fluid Data, on the Media Wall of Bath Spa University.

Invisible digital systems surround us, at sea and on land, in the tools we depend on and like to use. My recent artwork visually and materially explores the relationship between digital data, trustworthiness, tracking systems and notions of failure, through the medium of digital jacquard weaving.  When data systems go wrong what do we notice? What is the impact when the familiar or implied, that which is usually invisible, is translated into material form?

The imagery in the Fluid Data series layers captured, found and manipulated data, error messages, symbols and codes of digital tracking, maps of global undersea internet cables routes, graphs of climate data all connected through imagery of water. Periodically data is “missing” resulting in deliberately unwoven sections, conceptual visual glitches, or data is shifted and the order of structure results in the unexpected.

Feature photo from left to right: Dr Rebecca McGuire-Snieckus, Dr Anthony Head, Dr Kelly Thompson, Professor Christina Slade, Dr Neil Glen