Data Walk Workshop: Sensing Digital Materiality in Urban Public Spaces

Data walks and similar happenings have been proliferating in the years since the publication of Ingrid Burrington’s pioneering volume (“Networks of New York: An illustrated field guide to urban internet infrastructure”) in 2016. Now, the Open Cities Platform, critical infrastructure lab, and [urban interfaces], and the Special Interest Group “Inclusion in the Datafied City”, together bring you a Data Walking Workshop! The purpose is to bring together scholars and artists who have each engaged in developing data walks or similar projects to think through the phenomena of data walks as a methodological approach to data power and critical infrastructure studies.

The two-day workshop, organized by dr. Maxigas and dr. Michiel de Lange, will have space and time to explore the city of Utrecht, engage with like-minded participants among whom students in various relevant MA and RMA programs, and conduct a collective experiment in data walking resulting in a report/fanzine. The first day is dedicated to getting to know each other and exchanging perspectives in “show and tell” style presentations of prior work and the state of the art. The second day is for devising and conducting a collective experiment in data walk as a method. After the walk we discuss the experiment and document it in the form of a report/fanzine, with the help of facilitators in spontaneous experimental publishing.

The event brings into focus a wide spread method that is nonetheless habitually and literally relegated to the periphery of academic events, arts festivals, and community organising efforts. Common reflection and group improvisation is necessary at this particular stage of methodological development, because hitherto practitioners pushed the boundaries of data walks in the course of practices that have been relatively isolated from each other.  All the while, there has been an incredible outpour of enthusiasm for this creative method from the side of audiences, participants and co-creators.  Despite — or perhaps because — of the enthusiasm, however, the normative criteria for conduct and the systematic rationale for application have been less articulated.  This is why we ask “What is a good datawalk?”, while being aware that this is provocative question that will have many answers for many use cases and disciplinary orientations.