Data-Objects: sharing the attributes and properties of digital and material culture to creatively interpret complex information

This chapter discusses a current shift away from thinking about ideas of virtual reality, towards a conversation around hybrid digital/physical constructs and the notions of mixed or augmented reality. In particular the chapter explores how physical artifacts that are based on data extracted from computer generated virtual spaces are being created as a way of challenging how we read, interpret, and respond to digital information. This emerging trend for the realization of data sets into three-dimensional (3D) physical objects is discussed from the perspective of creative practice and digital information visualization. In these new constructs, digital data sets are concretized into a physical form, remediated from information sources, such as mobile phone coverage records, crime statistics, and temperature patterns. Through a series of examples, the chapter will investigate how these tangible translations can change our relationship to screen-based digital content, in particular statistical data, and seeks to reveal how by encoding digital information into a physical object we can establish a way of reading this data through spatial, temporal, and material variations that sit outside of the computer-monitor and the digital environment. Rapid prototyping making techniques are discussed as a trigger for a conversation around the ontological and epistemological readings of these liminal physical/data objects.