A Cartography of Human Connection by Domestic Data Streamers

We set out to produce an artwork that would map human connections online, to reunite us with the physical reality at the heart of our digital story. The story that will be told in the history books of the future.

In questioning our digital legacy, and the impact of digital storage, we wondered what a scribe for modern times might look if they had to prioritise and physicalise the internet we currently inhabit.

Driven by these questions we set out to produce a “Cartography of Human Connection”, that would return to the figure of a scribe to map this chaotic landscape of online data generation.

Our trusted scribes take the form of mechanical data critters whose duty is to physicalise information as it is generated in the online space. They are programmed to transform these invisible inputs into ink marks, visualising the quantity of information that flows between us each second. Their ever-changing paths remind us that behind every data input online we find human behaviour that fluctuates and shifts according to many varying factors.

This piece formed part of the Digital Impact exhibition in Barcelona's Design Hub. The first fully digital art exhibition in Barcelona.