Installation view at Crawl Space -
displaying our findings |
In our parallel (professional) lives,
Nicole and I both have quite a bit of experience with social science data
collection and analysis - trying to assess subjective things using scientific
means, or assigning a value to things like a view of the mountains, quality
of life, or an ecosystem. This project applied these same social science
methods to art, conducting two surveys and analyzing the data.
One survey showed people one of two images - a painting in a museum, or a
photoshopped image of the same painting sitting in the art section of a thrift
store (the pictures in the installation view at right). We asked survey
respondents to set a value on the painting they saw.
The other survey was given to three
different groups - people at the Pioneer Square Art Walk (outside of SOIL),
riders on the Bremerton ferry which connects Seattle to the military town
of Bremerton, and students at Aviation High School where we had been teaching
a high school class. This survey asked people what they thought of
art and where and how often they looked at it (below). |
| By designing surveys about something
that is personal, subjective, and difficult to categorize, we were able to
expose some of the inherent difficulties in the survey process - the forced
choices, question wording, and categorizing that not only can signal poor
survey design, but outright manipulation. As our society has become more
and more obsessed with data collection, polling and surveying to make decisions,
it has become common practice to design a survey to get the answer you want
- leaving us all data rich and information poor. This was reflected in the
chaotic 'punk rock science fair' presentation of the results of our analysis,
shown at right as installed at Crawl Space Gallery in Seattle.
The act of giving and taking a survey
is a public act and a personal one. In answering survey questions, the respondent
must make a number of decisions - whether to be straightforward and cooperative
no matter how unsatisfactory the choices are, or to be noncooperative or
answer untruthfully. It's also an act of trust - that the information you
give is not going to be manipulated or tabluated in a way that you did not
intend.
The surveyor is in the uncomfortable situation of being the face that no
one wants to see coming their way, and having to establish a nearly instantaneous
trust or rapport with their potential respondents. For the surveyor, tabluating
and analyzing the data is the private act - one that is fraught with
unanticipated questions, judgement calls, and follow-up questions that you
can never
ask. |
Installation view at Crawl Space
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