Data as Art, as Science, as a Reason for Being
Michael Appleton for The New York Times
I.B.M.’s “Think” exhibition features interactive panels about information collection and analysis.
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
Published: September 23, 2011
Anyone walking past Lincoln Center during the last few days, and glancing downward at its new access road, Jaffe Drive, would have seen what seemed to be a slightly eccentric art installation. A long band of animated colored lights would snake across a 123-foot-long wall of LEDs as a digital clock counted backward. Then that band might suddenly twist and wind around itself, erupt into curves, contort into waves, and, just as unexpectedly, subside again into temporary linear calm.
Or else, if you watched long enough, the wall might go blank, and when lighted again, would resemble a kind of elongated container. Bluish lights would pour inside it, mounting and sloshing about like some kind of luminous liquid, until the entire wall’s array would be filled to overflowing. And then the “liquid” would seem to spill from the sides, dripping down in cascades as the container emptied.