Global, a solo exhibition at Casal Solleric, the City of Palma’s contemporary art gallery.

Though Text Trends, Martin John Callanan deals with the spectacularization of information. Using Google data he explores the vast search data of its users. An animation takes the content generated by search queries and reduces this process to its essential elements: search terms vs. frequency searched for over time, presented in the form of a line graph, 16 of which are reproduced in this book.

Data Soliloquies is a book about the extraordinary cultural fluidity of scientific data. A wide array of graphs, charts, computer models and other forms of visual advocacy have become inescapable fixtures of public science presentations, though they are often treated as if they were neutral ‘found objects’ rather than elaborate narrative constructions containing high levels of statistical uncertainty. Through a mix of essays and artworks, this witty and engaging book — the result of a collaboration between Richard Hamblyn and Martin John Callanan during their terms as writer and artist in residence at the UCL Environment Institute — examines the theatricality of scientific data display, while critiquing some of the poorly designed statistical wallpaper that surrounds so much public science debate.

ISBN 9780903305044 (January 2010)

Available for order on Sladepress.com

Reviews
Furtherfield, Pau Waelder

Text Trends has been stored into the Rhizome ArtBase

Greg at Serial Consign has written a review of my new work Text Trends

… In experiencing the piece, the viewer sits idly and watches animations plot out the ebb and flow (or lack thereof) of a series of search terms over the last four years. This all plays out matter-of-factly with all the passion of a market index or a readerboard… In viewing this piece, I found that it invoked a bit of anxiety and I felt a little helpless… It is not too often that you come across a data-based project that makes you step back and think about how you qualify and evaluate visualization. More importantly Text Trends abstracts the casual manner in which we receive, scan and process information and language on a daily basis.