Just the Facts...
Friday 15th July 2005
Nottingham Evening Post (Essential Guide, page 25)
By Mark Patterson
Armed with her alcohol breath tester, clicker counters, atmospheric thermometers, GPS and other gadgets, all attached to a utility belt fastened around her fetching red tracksuit, Ellie Harrison is the Daily Data Logger.
She is after your personal data. And hers. Every day for the duration of the new exhibition at Nottingham’s Angel Row Gallery, 20-something Ellie will be noting down such vital statistics as the time she woke up, her body temperature, consumption of fluids and solids, gaseous emissions and her personal outlook. Then, every day, she will travel into the gallery to deliver the information to staff who, the poor fools, will have the task of transmitting the data to a series of tangible indicators such as flashing lights and monitor screens. One monitor will change colour to reflect Ellie’s body temperature, for example. Meanwhile, er, a plastic cactus will be inflated or deflated to reflect her daily gaseous emissions. The point of all this being...?
Well, it’s the same point of the entire exhibition which Ellie has curated. Titled Day-to-Day Data, the show brings together ten artists who all, in their own strange ways, set out to collect and collate huge amounts of largely irrelevant information.
Helen Frosi, for example, will attempt to discover winning Lottery numbers by examining ciphers in small daily occurrences; Hannah Brown will Ask visitors to fill in her Daily Efficiency and Behavioural Analysis Self-Evaluation Checklist to establish to what degree to match up to her vision of a perfect day; and in one of a number of matching web-based exhibitions, Adele Prince will be following the whereabouts of Marks and Spencer shopping trolleys.
For Ellie herself, this kind of thing constitutes her life’s work. After all, this is the woman who photographed everything she ate for an entire year; who logged her mileage on London’s public transport system, establishing that she almost got to Rio; and who measured how far she has swum across the world measured by distances in Nottingham swimming pools. Data collection and interpretation is her signature art. And with this exhibition, Ellie has succeeded in attracting national attention. It looks like being one of the best, most enjoyable, exhibitions of the year so far at the Angel Row Gallery.
The launch, next Wednesday, will feature one Sam Curtis, among other things. “He’s attempting to count everyone in the UK”, says Ellie. “He’s taking a kind of census and will be handing out badges with numbers on them to all visitors. He’s obviously number one”.
Why are these people doing such things? For Ellie, the art has always been about collecting the minute bits of information which make up our daily lives and then displaying them in dramatic ways. It’s a mildly subversive activity, throwing back at the world the daily data analysis which lies below all the comparison charts and league tables by which we judge and measure our lives and the services we use. It’s also about making a big scene over little things, immortalising the forgotten and forgettable moments. Surprisingly, Ellie’s managed to find a bunch of artists who think along the same lines as she does.
Visitors to Angel Row next week will see Ellie starring in her own video, in which, clad in red tracksuit and utility belt, she explains precisely how her Daily Data Display Wall is to be comprehended. “Making that utility belt was quite a big job!” she says. “The gadgets were mostly cheap, from Maplins. The atmospheric thermometer was on special offer and cost £2.98 but the GPS was £60, so that was pushing the boat out a bit...”
But where does she go after taking her obsession with data collection to the masses? She has a vague idea of cycling from Land’s End to John O’Groats in a month. “And the idea is that I’ll learn something new every day. One fact every day, but it won’t have to be connected to where I am or my cycling”.
Further Reference
- Day-to-Day Data website
- Angel Row Gallery website
- Video of the Daily Data Logger on Vimeo
- Daily Data Display Wall
- Gold Card Adventures
- The Challenge Series
- Hannah Brown website
- Adele Prince website
- Sam Curtis website
Other Press
- After the Data Confessional: Interview with Ellie Harrison
- Night at the Museum
- Interview: Ellie Harrison
- A Most Unusual Referendum Results Party
- Art Review: Counterpoint
- Getting Straight to the Point
- Confetti Cannon Primed to Explode, or Maybe Not
- Indyref Confetti Cannon to go on Display at Edinburgh Art Festival
- Counterpoint at Edinburgh Art Festival 2014
- Eat 22 (interview with Ellie Harrison)
- Power For The People! (by Ellie Harrison)
- Counter-Hegemonic Propaganda Machine (by Ellie Harrison)
- The Hunger Artists
- The Artists’ Bond
- Notes Towards Becoming a Good Citizen (interview with Ellie Harrison)
- She Shelves Sanctuary
- National Museum of Roller Derby (interview with Ellie Harrison)
- Early Warning Signs
- Artist Fund Thyself
- Ellie & Oliver Show
- Art for the Age of Information
- Workers Are Not Alone
- Market Forces
- DIY Lottery Art Funding
- Converse Emerging Artists Award: Ellie Harrison
- Fair Exchange
- Vault Art Glasgow
- A Good Climate for Business (by Ellie Harrison)
- Interview with Ellie Harrison
- A Brief History of Privatisation
- Art Monthly Profile
- Work-a-thon for the Self-Employed
- Trajectories (interview with Ellie Harrison)
- Furtherfield Radio
- Funding: One Alternative
- New Forms of Collectivity (by Ellie Harrison)
- The Finished Article
- Art Erupts Out of a Fine Mess
- Artists in a Bid for Success with Different Type of Draw
- Party Politics: Election Art
- Young Scottish Artists
- Budget Buzzwords Prompted Machine to Deliver Crisps
- Lady Dada
- Summer Reading
- Altermodernism: The Age of Stupid (by Ellie Harrison)
- Ellie Harrison Loves Tea
- Confessions of a Recovering Data Collector
- Five Pointers to Becoming the ‘Perfect Artist’
- How Can We Continue Making Art? (by Ellie Harrison)
- This is Not a Circular
- Ones to Watch
- Braziers International
- Two Years of Tea Blog
- Angel Row Closing Party
- The Obsessives
- New Stars on Broadway
- This is Ellie Harrison
- Prime
- Insignificance
- Day-to-Day Data Review
- Sports Day
- Many Conceptual Artists Have an Unholy Delight in Statistics
- Day-to-Day Data Review
- Under the Data, the Stars
- Day-to-Day Data Exhibitions Preview
- Out of the Ordinary
- Just the Facts...
- Day-to-Day Data Event Preview
- Underground Movement
- Postcard Artist Set to Go Underground
- Gold Adventure
- Not to Be Sneezed at...
- The Big Sneeze
- Artist’s Profile
- LabCulture Feature
- Treat Yourself Review
- A Day in the Life
- Eat Me!
- Eat 22 Events Preview
- Graduate’s Snappy Diet
- Diet Hard
- Little Gems