The UCLA Department of Design Media Arts, invites you to our December DMA Lecture, From Small Data to Big Data: Recent Projects by Studio Daniel Canogar

Wednesday, December 4th at 12pm
EDA (Broad Room 1250)
Free and Open to the Public
For more information about Daniel Canogar please visit his website

The epistemological challenges of the shift from Gutenberg’s printing press to the ever-expanding liquid-like libraries that hold knowledge are profound - ones that we are only beginning to understand. Canogar’s dataworks are an attempt to capture, and cognitively process, the implications of these dramatic changes through examining the position occupied by the individual in a technologically interconnected age.

Canogar's work explores this research field through various approaches and formalizations. In his series Latencies and Small Data, the artist rescues obsolete technologies that not too long ago defined our existence. The objects we discard serve as a precise portrait of our past selves.

In parallel, in his sculptural screen artworks, Canogar expands the two-dimensional screen into tridimensionality. These screens, characterized by complex curves, interact with their surrounding space and feature generative animations. Driven by algorithms crafted and developed in his studio, these artworks respond in real time to different datasets, including climate change information, the barrage of 24/7 news cycles, and trending searches on Google.

Furthermore, these data works attempt to integrate generative art into the history of art, as they explore unexpected aesthetic influences, such as postwar Abstract Expressionism, Performance, and Op Art from the 1960s, among others.

When creating artwork for public spaces, Canogar references the location or people that will use the site, and he seeks out opportunities where technology and the public realm complement each other. The data that drives the artwork is extracted from sources that are relevant to the location and the people that will be experiencing it.

Throughout his career he has collaborated with architects, urban planners, construction and structural engineers, interior designers, landscape architects, contractors, city officials, and AV production companies. He and his team have installed public projects internationally, including in the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Brazil, and a cruise ship traveling the Pacific Ocean.

Studio Daniel Canogar, based in Los Angeles and Madrid, is formed by 11 highly motivated and creative individuals with over a decade of experience building large-scale, public art commissions. Art and science intersect in the studio by combining artists, art historians, and architects with engineers and programmers. As lead artist for the studio, Canogar takes pride in having built a professional team through the years.

UCLA Design Media Arts cultivates a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to artistic practice that focuses on experimentation and innovative thinking. We synthesize practice, history, and theory and hybridize technologies, discourses, and audiences.

LOCATION: EDA
240 Charles E Young Dr N.
Broad Art Center,
Los Angeles, CA 90095

Public parking is available in ULCA Parking Structure 3.