2024

Installation

Graphite on Paper, Pen and Ink on Paper, Photocollagraph Prints on Paper

43' 1" x 9' 4"​

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Quantified Self is the name of the growing movement of people who track and collect data on themselves for self-reflection or the optimization of their lives. This can take the form of our cell phones tracking our steps or someone taking the initiative to track their blood oxygen levels and mood. For my thesis project, which shares a name with the movement, I wanted to push this concept of using data to make sense of oneself beyond the practical into a fictionalized space. I have imagined a person with more than a casual engagement in Quantified Self, the perfect Quantified Self zealot. 

 

Using data I have taken from my own life, I have made an installation of graph-drawings. The amount of time spent drawing each square or tile of an image represents a numerical value. Despite the data being from my own life, this is not a self-portrait. I imagine these graphs are made in earnest by the Quantified Self zealot. The Zealot loves data and the repetitive action of collecting it. She tracks every aspect of her life. She graphs, obsesses over, and models all these statistics, then tears it down and starts again. The graphs hang on the walls of her home, branching and growing around her like a mold. Ultimately, these graphs become the document of her spiral toward insanity. These are the graph-images that make up my thesis project.

 

I used real data to create a fictional story. Governments, news organizations, and corporations can do the same. Data can lie. A blind trust in anything supposedly “data-driven” is dangerous. This factor most separates me from my imagined zealot character who created these graphs. The Zealot falls into one of the biggest criticisms of Quantified Self, which is Data Fetishisation. This is the idea that people become so enamored with having the numbers that they ignore complexity and reduce the data to easy, one-dimensional interpretations. Turning oneself into a number, or a graph, or a collection of monstrous graph-drawing installations isn’t necessarily an example of self-discovery or self-knowledge; it is reducing one to a less complex version of a self.