Data Epics
The Data Epics is a Studio Tilt project that explores how fiction can reframe our understanding of domestic data by engaging the imagination in new forms of data representation. With the rise of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in domestic spaces, data has become an integral but often invisible part of everyday life, typically framed as objective and neutral. This project challenges that assumption by commissioning fiction writers to craft short stories based on real smart home data provided by participating households.
Through a process of data fictionalization, the project reveals the interpretative nature of data, highlighting its inherent biases, ambiguities, and the ways in which data is always embedded in human experience. Rather than reinforcing technocentric views of data as transparent and deterministic, the Data Epics offer an alternative: to expand data imaginaries by constructing new stories with data. In this new orientation, data is seen as narrative, speculative, and entangled with lived experience.
Audrey Desjardins, Gabrielle Benabdallah, and Maya A. Kaneko. 2024. Un/Making Data Imaginaries: The Data Epics. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 31, 6, Article 83 (December 2024), 38 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3685269
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