The Polish pavilion will present Datament at the International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. The installation will allow visitors to experience data in its physical form. The core aim of the exhibition is to showcase how prevalent data has become, shaping the reality in which we live, create, and dwell. Created by Anna Barlik, Marcin Strzała and Jacek Sosnowski, Datament is the starting point for discussing how data and new technologies will play a crucial role in the future.
The pavilion will be filled with the frames of four life-size houses. These chaotic and satirical structures symbolize the original data form, reproducing the “source data.” The installation will have 1:1 scale replicas of the spatial forms of homes from four different countries. The constructions, made of about 2,000 m of colored steel profiles, are based on average, generalized data on the size, shape, and functional arrangement of homes in various geographic zones.
The installation will allow visitors to interact with this information, serving as a springboard for a conversation about new technologies. Furthermore, while these significant amounts of data may not provide humanity with pre-made solutions, the exhibition encourages visitors to see how these infrastructures can improve the questions they ask.
The exhibition suggests that statistical data analysis and the use of algorithms in design significantly influence how we will live in the present and the future in architecture, urbanism, and spatial planning. However, raw data is becoming less and less critical to humanity. Due to this warped reality of the information process by new technology, the display questions civilization's judgment in this digital mirage.
Datament is a recording of a conversation between an architect and an artist. Work by Anna Barlik focuses on color, composition, and local situations in visual art. Architect Marcin Strzała investigates the connection between digital data and its physical representation through design. They have created a structure based on digital data analysis alongside curator Jacek Sosnowski. The neologism used for the title, Datament, alludes to the pervasive "data establishment" that constantly shapes the world in which we live, work, and play.
“We share a world with data. Believing in their infallibility, we let algorithms calculate and design our houses and cities. However, without a sensitive and conscious designer, digitally processed data can create distorted solutions, such as those presented in the Polish Pavilion.”
--Creators of Datament
Many other countries have announced their plans for Lesley Lokko’s overarching theme in this edition of La Biennale di Venezia, The Laboratory of the Future. The Australian Pavilion, “Unsettling Queenstown,” tackles themes of decolonization and imagined futures. Finland’s Pavilion will present “Huussi,” a dive into the future of sanitation, the architecture of water, and nutrient circulation. “Everlasting Plastics,” the United States Pavilion, plans to fill the space with works in plastic, examining the role of this material literally and metaphorically.
