Data & Society Fellow Tega Brain is particularly interested in how to design from the dystopian position of the Anthropocene. How can an artist produce work that is simultaneously critical and generative? This talk provides an overview of Brain’s recent work which focuses on phenological environmental data-sets, i.e. the timing of recurring biological events such as flowering, budding, and migratory events. Studying the changes in these events provides evidence that the world’s biosphere is changing as a result of climate change.
Data & Society’s Fellows Talks is a three-part Databite series showcasing our 2016-2017 fellows cohort. Each talk features 3 fellows speaking about their work, wide-ranging interdisciplinary connections, and a few of the provocative questions that have emerged this year.
Tega Brain is an artist, environmental engineer, and researcher whose work intersects art, ecology, and engineering. As an artist, she makes dysfunctional devices, eccentric infrastructures and experimental information systems. She is an Assistant Professor at SUNY Purchase and holds degrees in environmental engineering and fine arts. She also contributes to open source software initiatives of the Processing Foundation. Her current research addresses the relationship between computational systems and the environment. How is computation both shaping environmental systems and changing our perception of them?
About Databites
Data & Society’s “Databites” speaker series presents timely conversations about the purpose and power of technology, bridging our interdisciplinary research with broader public conversations about the societal implications of data and automation.