Surprisingly good conversation with Carrie Scott

This is the teaser video from Carrie Scott at www.seen.art - it’s behind a paywall, but I’ll have the podcast to post soon. Ignore the horrible thumbnail preview image, we talk like normal people.

Picture this: An artist walks into Google headquarters with a radical idea.

"All that creepy surveillance data you're collecting? Give it back to people. Let them turn it into art. Help them see themselves."

The response? "If people could really see what we know about them, they would fucking freak out."

(Their words, not mine.)

That artist is Laurie Frick, and her story is one of the most fascinating things I've heard all year. And I got to talk to her all about it.In this episode of Have You Seen?, you’ll explore:

·    Why Frick wore sleep-tracking sensors on her head for THREE YEARS (and convinced her husband to do it too)

·    How she created a viral Kickstarter app that let you "take back your data and turn it into art"

·    What it's like pitching senior VPs at Microsoft and Google on the future of personal data

·    Why her artistic hero is a medieval Sienese painter (trust me, this somehow makes perfect sense)

·    The one material she's working with now that "looks like something fuzzy that could grow"

Here's the thing: Frick isn't making digital art. She's cutting up paper, leather, breakfast cereal, and wool felt. She sandblasts glass. She makes what she calls "bumpy walls."

Her work is deeply physical, surprisingly beautiful, and asks a question most of us are too freaked out to consider:

What if your data could help you understand yourself?

Not in a Black Mirror way. In a genuinely human, almost meditative way. Like seeing yourself through a friend's eyes for the first time.

Our conversation moves from Silicon Valley boardrooms to medieval museums, from privacy paranoia to unexpected hope. It's part tech critique, part art history, part manifesto for a future we're not sure we want (but maybe should).

Fair warning: You'll never look at your phone's health app the same way again.

See you in the future (whether we're ready for it or not).

-Carrie & the Seen Team

Lexus asked me to make art about a new car

Something is changing, a few years ago I’d been approached by some big-name magazines (O yeah) and even morning shows…. and then, they’d never happen. I always figured they realized I was keen on technology, but not 35 years old, and these opportunities faded away. So was very, very surprised when a creative director approached me to make art and film a video for Lexus and after the usual check, double-check, they picked me.

During the 12 hour shoot at a hipster studio in a very funky part of south central LA I asked that same 28 year old creative director, how did you find me? “instagram!” — but did you know I was old when you selected me, we didn’t zoom with the Director and Producer until after the agreement was signed? “oh honey, we have the internet” she exclaimed, laughing. “We had a whole profile on you we showed the client”. Turns out social media spots are more interested in authenticity than hipster-youth. Seriously, something has turned.

The idea was, technology means nothing unless it makes you feel something. And they wanted a data artist to make a piece of art to humanize and make sense of some engineering. Here’s the spot

Filmed and produced by Uproxx Media, agency Team One, client Lexus — with data artist Laurie Frick

Vaccinated, installing art across the country

Everyone we meet has a vaccination story, in an elevator, the waiter in the restaurant (aaaaah restaurants!!), the friend. Did you have side effects, when are you scheduled, were you relieved? So in late March we set off with an SUV full of glass to install works in Boston and New York. The pink and green glass piece was carefully packed and loaded to drive 2000 miles on the shortest route Google could take us.

75 pieces of these long rectangles were packed for a big wall installation in a biotech lobby in Cambridge, Mass - very close to my beloved Moderna HQ. Anything that helps brighten these scientists and keeps them focused is good for me.

Both these installations are on the site - Childhood Hunger and Glass Time

How does data tell a story with large scale physical art installations

What We Eat by Laurie Frick and built by Zigzag in Germany in 2019, installation at COP25, Madrid.

My projects use data to tell a story that unfolds over time, the viewer is initially struck by colorful pattern that feels organic and handmade. This year I completed an interactive online project for Google Arts & Culture in London to highlight their environmental initiative. “What We Eat” used actual daily diets of thousands of people from the US, France and UK measured by the CO2 carbon footprint of each food item turned it into colorful pattern, the viewer could also create their own diet to compare. It’s a subtle way to show the dramatic difference for food choices. Google built a huge physical installation of the work at COP25, the climate conference in Madrid 2019. And you can play with the interactive app online at www.experiments.withgoogle.com

My foray into kiln fired glass started with a request to design a 5 story high stairwell covering for the outside of a new condominium building in West Hollywood. Very exciting to produce something so visible. Lots of building codes dictate how the 8 ft wide x 60 ft tall space can screen an outdoor stairwell, open, closed and size of holes are very particular. I wanted it to read as single vertical gesture and be satisfying for the tenant that walked up those stairs everyday and saw it up close to – and still striking to the people who would drive by that busy corner near Fairfax and Santa Monica Blvd. I used north and southbound traffic data by time of day to produce an overlapping colorful pattern that is graphic and memorable. Started 2 years ago, it installs 4Q 2020.

The outdoor mural in Austin, Texas was funded by the Hotel Occupancy tax, the RFP asked to make something that related to Austin visitors. The 500 ft underpass was dingy, weed and rock strewn under the railroad tracks, but a new Whole Foods and a number of condo buildings had opened nearby. Hardly anyone walked this route. The budget was only $50K and the scale of the project enormous. Initially it was a one year temporary installation that got extended to two years. I used actual visitor data for the simple striped pattern that was easy to paint. 16 panel art signs were covered with outdoor upholstery in the colors of the 16 most instagrammed Austin murals. Installed 2 years ago, we established a small budget for graffiti removal – and the mural and upholstery look as good today as the day it was installed (big endorsement for sunbrella fabrics). Lots and lots of pedestrians and cyclists now use that path. I was wowed by the power of art to change the experience and feel of a space.

Glass and the pandemic

I’ve talked to several artist and musician friends who are completely flummoxed during these months of the pandemic, the news is too intense to have the old work that occupied us make sense. I will tell you the thing that saved me - was glass. After a deep depression in mid-March 2020 when I quickly realized the art world would be in a deep funk for years, public projects would lose their funding, fancy installations in corporate lobbies would not feel right when they’ve just laid off employees, galleries in Chelsea would be vacant of collectors, or even anyone to look. I don’t have an endless horizon to produce, and these valuable years would be lost…. and then I decided to stop what I was doing and just experiment. It had been years since the calendar was so clear.

The kiln I bought last year, and was too afraid to use without a little more instruction. I watched the youtube videos, read the manual and started. All the classes I signed up for at Corning Glass Studios in the summer cancelled, I decided to pretend I was at a residency. Yaddo, the Headlands, Bemis, these were familiar places, empty studio with gobs of time. OK, I’ll just start.

I made dumb mistakes, and the pieces at the beginning were frightening. This one is made from two of the bad ones that I cut up with a Harbor Freight Tile Saw I bought and had delivered. An unboxing video on youtube of some guy in a garage gave me the confidence to buy it and put it together. With a better diamond blade and a connection to the garden hose a breakthrough idea emerged. I could just put the wet power tools outside in the backyard, so what if it rained. They’re wet tools.

Data began to creep into the daily glass experiments, using my old familiar American Time Use Survey - eliminating all the time categories for work, school, commuting and sleep made it more appropriate to ‘pandemic time’ and it gave the strips of 24 hours categorized by color coded activities a connection to now. Eventually I figured out how to fire them with little holes in the top so they can hang on a hook. Follow me on instagram - I post pics of each little discovery.

Pieces got more elaborate, and what I realized - rather than lying in bed in the morning reading the news and worrying, I jumped up to check the temperature of the kiln to see if it had cooled enough to open. Firings take almost 24 hours each, mostly because once the glass gets hot enough to melt at 1475, you’ve got to cool it very slowly or it will crack.

I told this story to an arts writer, Barbara Purcell who moved to Austin recently from New York and explained about waiting for the kiln to cool to see what would come out of it… and she said “aren’t we all waiting for the kiln to cool?” and wrote a sweet profile piece in Sightlines. Stay tuned, I’m still making experimental glass everyday.

Women in the arts

Slide deck of women artists and the stats — it’s very fun and mesmerizing to flip thru. Hard to argue with the power of work women are creating. Pulled together for SXSW panel “Changing Role of Women in the Arts, March 2019”. Worth sharing.