Looking Outwards-07

http://intuitionanalytics.com/other/knowledgeDatabase/

http://moebio.com/research/sevensets/

This project titled “Personal Knowledge Database” was created by Santiago Ortiz. In this computational project, Santiago catalogues his internet references collected over more than 10 years. These references include projects, wikipedia articles, images, videos, texts, and many others. All of these references are organized into an isomorphic 7 set Venn diagram that tries balance each section. The 7 categories in this Venn diagram are humanism, technology, language, science, interface, art, and networks. He has also included 19 filters based on the source of the reference (ie. Image, post, blog, book, etc.).

What I absolutely love about this project is the self-reflection of his own digital searches and references. I think looking at 10 years of this data can teach you a lot about yourself, and I’ve always admired large scale self-reflection. What is also amazing about this project, is that all of these references are embedded into the interface, so with one click you can access any of the information. This project shows a lot about this artist’s sensibilities, and I admire them very much. I would be curious to know how Santiago feels after cataloguing this much personal data and finding patterns.

One other comment I have about this work is that I find it a bit hard to keep track of the category overlaps with the main Venn diagram. With the colored archetype, you are given a list of which colors are overlapping with each section you hover over. I wonder if this would be a helpful section to be utilized in the main project.