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Soft data celebration: dancing between algorithms and craft

Lena MK Université de Montréal, Maison MONA lenamk.site

Proposal

Softness can be described as “the ‘compliance’ of a surface, its ability to deform in response to pressure” ¹. What would soft data look like, and what could we do with it? This proposal experiments with the challenges of categorisation in datasets. Visualising categories in data can create patterns from which we build compelling narratives, yet they are always incomplete and their constraints can be frustrating. Soft data celebration is a data physicalisation that plays with the categorisation challenges in the collection of the Montreal Contemporary Art Museum ². For this presentation, I would like to share the experience of making, sharing and documenting this project, a case study in my doctoral research on GLAM+ data physicalisation.

The initial “itch” behind this project came from the property nationality in the open data about the collection’s artists ³. I wanted to offer a different take on diversity, loosening the nationalistic constraint to recognise both indigenous and québecois identities. Also, while it is common for many individuals to have multiple origins, their representation often becomes a visualisation “issue” creating graphical complexity, which, in turn, obfuscates pattern and sense making. Leaving the digital space allowed me to return the collection to a physical and tangible environment, enabling broader access to the data and to the MAC collection. Facing the issue of scale, I chose to represent the artworks from the “mixed media” (techniques mixtes) category, as it is itself a product of categorisation challenges. For this subset of 491 artworks (out of a total 7840 works documented in the open data), I used pompoms to celebrate the origins associated with the artists of each artwork, using paler colours for common origins, in contrast with bright, sometimes sparkly, colours highlighting more exceptional occurrences.

Amongst the material choices, softness and playfulness were chosen in contrast with the harsher realities weighing on our personal lives as well as on the cultural, social, and political spheres. It was also inspired by Soft Computing, a series of technoplushies that emphasises the intimacy and physical interactions we have with technology, by the net artist Faith Holland ⁴ Softness also became a metaphor to underline the agency we can have on data, and narrative. Pompons garlands create a warmer and more accessible environment, where change is a simple repair made by cutting the thread and tying new knots. Unexpectedly, as they are so light individually, hanging them on a pex structure led to a a “data-driven” shape: gravity naturally formed what we might call, from the standpoint of computer science or algorithmic art, Bézier curves ⁵.

Figure 1: Soft Data Celebration, Lena MK, 2025. CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Soft Data Celebration is a case study in my doctoral research at the crossroads of textility and algorithmic. My approach is founded in thinking of craft as technology and of technology as craft in order to highlight the fabrication process of digital work as well as the technicity of hand crafted artifacts. Having a practice-based research (recherche-création) means that the steps of sharing and documenting the work are as important as the material making. During the demo ⁶, upon discovering both the data physicalisation and the research process behind it, visitors were invited to contribute to a collaborative documentation. As an outcome, hundreds of pictures, videos and comments generated insights and helped document the project. Thinking about access for different people and also through time, I created a sensory audiodescription and shared it online, with its transcript ⁷. This proposal is another opportunity to document the project, in English this time, and to further the research that emerges from it by reflecting on the beauty and the challenges within patterns created by algorithmic and hand crafted categorisations.

Figure 2: Soft Data Celebration, Lena MK, 2025. CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

1. Lupton, Ellen and Andrea Lipps. 2018. The Senses: Design beyond Vision. New York: Copper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum ; Princeton Architectural Press. Exhibition catalog from the Copper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York. https://www.cooperhewitt.org/channel/senses/ ↩

2. Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, or MAC, https://macm.org/. ↩

3. Open data from the MAC: https://www.donneesquebec.ca/recherche/dataset/macrepertoire ↩

4. Holland, Faith. Soft Computing. https://www.faithholland.com/portfolio_page/soft-computing/ ↩

5. Wikipedia encyclopedia, “Bezier curve”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9zier_curve ↩

6. 20th till 22 of May 2025, and on demand during the month of June, classroom C-2086, Université de Montréal ↩

7. Célébration de données molles, francophone audio reading and transcript: http://lenamk.site/doc/exSynth/audiodescription_donneesMolles.html ↩