the students of the department new media / interface and interaction design of the study program visual communication of the berlin university of the arts examined the topic of data traces in the digital realm in the winter semester 2018/19.
the reason for this is the new general data protection regulation of the european union, which came into force in may 2018 and allows anyone to request their data profiles from companies and organizations. however, anyone who has ever requested their data, for example from google, will notice that the extensive data packages are not easy to understand.
the process of detailed and extensive data research was documented by the students to facilitate this data analysis for others. what data does which company or organization have about me? which format does the data have? how can i make it readable? which questions remain open? the results can be found here.
the students used their own data to tell their own stories, to visualize them and to design them as software, installation or data sculpture. the projects that have been created follow different approaches and strategies: for example, sand clocks make it clear how much time is going by on facebook and google. an analogue facebook calendar shows new and unexpected connections; liquids illustrate a connection between weather data and netflix consumption. is it possible to compare digital data profiles with a stasi file? what character traits are conveyed through voice messages? these different questions and experiments show the different approaches of the students. the documentation of the results will be linked here.
editorial: anna beilmann, annika gassebner, destina atasayar, isabella zappe, kiro mousa, kora kimpel, lucie jo knilli, nadya shikalova, roman roth / programming: lucie jo knilli / icons: destina atasayar / special thank you to: piet schmidth and frederik müller