A fitting art-meets-tech logo for Sizzle 6.

Part 2 of Digital Sizzle 6 was a brilliant marriage of art and tech.

Last night, Whitechapel Gallery hosted the results of the Digital Sizzle hackathon earlier this month, where techies and artists came together to create. And the results were fascinating. With an impressive display of technological understanding and artistic flare, these collaborations are truly brilliant and I felt honoured to view the exhibition.

Walking through the gallery halls, it was often easy to forget I was looking at analysed data, and instead immerse myself with the aesthetic beauty of what was displayed.

In particular, there are two pieces that stood out to me…

After analysing a Twitter user’s tweets, the data was turned into a necklace.

The Data Necklace

At face value, the data necklace, credited to Stef Lewandowski, was absolutely stunning, and totally reminded me of something Tatty Devine might sell. And after lusting for a few moments about how I might be able to buy one, I remembered that I was at a tech event and realised that the necklaces on display were actually the visual representations of a Twitter user’s individual tweets.

The necklace shows how often they tweeted, how chatty they were and how frequently they used a particular word over a recent time period. The creators then used acrylic, felt and silver with a laser-cutting and laser-etching to produce these unique necklaces.

But when I see this necklace, I see an incredible potential for a commercial product. I can’t be the only one who’d love a necklace representing my tweets, can I?

The data dress in action.

The data dress

The data dress is another piece that really stuck out to me.

The data dress team, made up by Rachel Megawhat, Ravi Kotecha and Benjamin Jefferys, complied tweets on Twitter hashtagged #LFW and used the messages and images attached to them to create this paper dress.

And while the dress is totally impractical (just image if it rained – nightmare!) it is still gorgeous and demonstrates just how data can be used in a visually pleasing way.

And on the last day of London Fashion Week, the team took a model out to be photographed in the dress (pictured right) which I think was a great move to show just how this tech-meets-art project can fit into the real world.

The data dress took data from mTwitter hastagged #LFW and used it to create a dress.

The concept behind Digital Sizzle 6

We believe that emerging technology, innovation and start up culture has been fundamentally impacting on more traditional cultural areas outside our humble tech scene.

From art to music, sculpture to dance, data and technological innovation have had a ripple effect and are producing new forms of creativity every day.

For Digital Sizzle 6, we’re going to showcase the best artists and data experts in a two part event, creation and exhibition.

– From the Digital Sizzle website

Fun fact! Over a year ago I was lucky enough to attend and photograph Digital Sizzle 1. How time flies…