Data as Culture - Art that uses data as a material

Stupidity Tax explores our fascination with prediction and gambling against the epic failure of the vast majority of all lottery players. For the year 2015, Lee analysed data sets of historical winning Powerball Lottery numbers in the US and developed data visualisations to create future predictive ‘wins’. For an entire year he kept a blog of all the numbers he played, and the visualisations, sonifications and philosophy he created to generate those numbers. The blog also includes a running commentary which takes us through his rollercoaster of emotion; from wry disdain to hope, sadness and disappointment and, at times, despair at the compulsive grip of the activity. He muses on the possibility that he will win in the future and create a time machine to plant numbers for himself in the past.

For the UK version of the work, Lee is using the entire dataset of past National Lottery figures, and predicting new ones with different analysis techniques each week. Follow stupiditytax.tumblr.com for Lee’s 2018 predictions.

Graphic design and wall layout of ODI installation by Adrian Philpott