Data as Culture - Art that uses data as a material

I wish to communicate with you maps the different sites and technologies relating to the old Liverpool and Bidston Observatories, linking them to their current legacies such as the National Oceanographic Centre at Liverpool University. Wang’s unique style of drawing renders a network of places, communities, and instruments as a vast evolving assemblage. Flags, installed by the artist at FACT and atop the Bidston Lighthouse and Bidston Observatory, depict her own designs for reworking traditional semaphore signals for the 21st century.

Wang’s flags echo the 18th century merchant’s signalling system used to mark the arrival of their vessels, reawakening Bidston’s 200 year history as a site of flag-based communication. Local lore tells of sailors’ wives watching for the hoisting of flags, to mark when their loved ones might return safely home.

Courtesy of the artist. A new commission for FACT supported by Ministry of Culture (Taiwan) and using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.