Mimi Onuoha
Mimi Onuoha is a Nigerian – American artist and researcher whose graduating from NYU with a Master of Professional Studies. Her work emphasized on social relationships and power dynamics behind data collection. She uses print, code, installations, and videos to call attention to the ways in which those in the margins are differently abstracted, represented, and missed by sociotechnical systems.
She mentioned many times in her speech, that we shouldn’t only focus on the data collected and ignore a possible intensive story behind it. The *69 project she did is very inspiring, handing out phone numbers to the catcallers she encounter is super creative but also requires a lot of encouragement, I can tell she’s very strong inside, so she can overcome her fear and did this project to help herself get back the initiative to have a good day and enjoy her life, and not letting her day being ruined by the catcallers. I love how she explained why she didn’t do anything to the phone number, because it’s not about the catcaller’s and what revenge should she give them back, but how can she walk out of the bad feelings they bring to her life.
The second project is also very inspiring. In this project called “Pathway”, she worked with four groups of people: three coworkers, one family (whose about to welcome a newborn in their live), one long distance couple and one set of roommates whose about to be separated in a month. She puts her data collection into maps, charts and have different colors to represent everyone, the outcome of the visualize data is very appealing. And again, it’s not just about the data, but the time she gets to spend with these groups of people, the experience she had with them, the stories they told her, and all the changes took place during that month is very interesting and eye-opening.
At the end, she mentions that we should not only look at what’s being collected, but also what is missing. Collection takes more than it gives and sometimes you can be benefit from nonexistence.