Database Imaginary

Database Imaginary opens Saturday, November 13 at the Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Center, Canada.

"Database Imaginary presents 23 works made by 33 artists between 1971 and 2004. The art projects in this exhibition span a period almost as long as the word database has been in use. It is really only with the rise of computing and widespread access to vast quantities of organized information that the term has come to the fore in the popular imagination. The urge to organize, however, is a longstanding trait of human civilization. In this sense, Database Imaginary is less about databases than about this cultural moment when they have become ever-present.

Databases structure our economy, our knowledge systems, our security. Yet these structures serve and are subject to multiple goals and agendas. Our practical experience of databases in westernized societies suggest access not just to information about the world, but the world¹s access to information about us. We are the objects of databases: a phone number to market to, a credit risk, a questionable border-crosser.

All the artists in Database Imaginary engage imaginatively with the organization of data through their use of aesthetic, conceptual, social and political strategies."
Curators Sarah Cook, Steve Dietz, Anthony Kiendl

Since not everybody will be able to visit Banff and see the show an extensive website comes in handy to explore the Database Imaginary. As you might expect, it features a kind of database for navigation replete with a search engine. Check it out and contribute your own inquiry as added reference for future searches.

Good opportunity also to point to an interesting blog edited by one of the curators of the show, Steve Dietz. Not only is he constantly cruising through the world in hot pursuit of all things that smell and taste like tech art, he's also the director of the BIG BANG show planned for San Jose, CA in 2006(!). Read it and stay tuned for what's to come.