Mimi Onuoha // Steiner Lecture in Creative Inquiry, 4/24/2018

Mimi Onuoha (@thistimeitsmimi) is an artist and researcher examining the implications of data collection and computational categorization. Her work uses code, writing, and sculpture to explore missing data and the ways in which people are abstracted, represented, and classified.

Based in Brooklyn, Onuoha has been in residence at Eyebeam Art & Technology Center, the Data & Society Research Institute, Columbia’s Tow Center, and the Royal College of Art. She has spoken and exhibited in festivals internationally, and in 2014 was selected to be in the inaugural class of Fulbright-National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellows. She currently is a contributor at Quartz, where she uses code and data to tell stories about the implications of emerging technologies. Her interests include data collection, missing datasets, sculptures about algorithms, information visualization, and zines. Onuoha once tried (and failed) to find out where her electricity comes from.

Onuoha earned her B.A. from Princeton University and an MPS from the NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program. She is presently a visiting faculty member in the division of Visual and Performing Arts at Bennington College, where she teaches courses in “Impossible Maps” and “A Philosophy of Data”.

This lecture is made possible by the Sylvia and David Steiner Speaker Series and the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry.