CODEX.
Codex is a multicomponent output that develops aesthetic and speculative geographies to reflect upon the role that social media plays as a platform for the dissemination of cultural and political power. Consisting of a number of experimental artists’ maps derived from data taken from Wikipedia articles, the body of work includes open software (GNU), large-scale, data-driven animations and physical inkjet prints, and a website, leading to international exhibitions. Corby undertook the research as P-I of the AHRC-funded Digital Realism project. See Portfolio Booklet for documentation of research dimensions.
- Submitting institution
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The University of Westminster
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- v2316
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
- Codex animations (exhibited as CodexTerra Incognita) first shown at: ISEA, Dubai, UAE, 30/08/14 - 08/11/14. Codex prints first exhibited at: Geo-Codes: Mapping a Practice in the Post-Print Age, China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, 22/09/15 - 03/11/15
- Brief description of type
- Other: Multicomponent
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month
- October
- Year
- 2014
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- While Buckminster Fuller or Agnes Denes’ mappings hint at the ‘utopian’ or redemptive power of reason and a human capacity to progress to a saner more ecologically and socially equitable future, Codex’s mappings explore a less certain vision. The work’s deformed geologies are suggestive of how the production and circulation of superabundant data have been reshaping material, cultural, political and social structures. In this respect Codex’s technical analysis and reflections upon metadata shed light on the ways that Wikipedia articles are generated, bringing to the fore the social practices and power dynamics underlying the creation of other social media and online materials.
Codex develops novel methods that involve surface-and-depth approaches to metadata to produce aesthetic mappings based on information normally concealed, suggesting that if art-making is to focus on social media data from a critical standpoint it is vital that it delves beneath the surface. In its synthesis of technological data practices with art-making, Codex nonetheless developed data artefacts that could not only be read informationally but also experienced as aesthetic mappings in their own right.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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