Datarama Shows Us Its Stuff

By Stephen Noble on April 10, 2010 in Art & Design

Yesterday saw the latest Datarama event – a stage for ideas to be shown, shared, and generally talked about.

Hosted at Tyneside Cinema, it is an open event, and with the description intentionally aloof it’s a bit mysterious to the uninitiated. Every two months, the self-billed democratic sharing event gets people to stand up in front of curious cats to tell them things they might find interesting.

First talk at Datarama: how the NHS gets you to give blood

“We organise it with the most basic framework and let the members shape the outcome of the night,” said Dominic Smith, one of the artists behind Ptechnic, the event organisers.

“You have a lot of programmers and technologists coming as well as artists so there’s a nice mix in the group. We’re all working to deadlines and professional schedules so it’s really nice that people can show something that can be a bit crap, and say ‘I’m working on this but it doesn’t work yet.’

“Then people end up suggesting ideas and you get a lot of collaborations that start here.”

First up was Katy Merrington. Katy has recently given blood, and decided to point out the odd mix in language used to generate blood donations. The guilt trip approach – people will die because of you, you selfish git with all your cells in your own body – to the encouragement of a cuppa tea and a rest, and that everything’s fine and actually you’ll find it’s almost ethereal this donation malarky. No stress, just biscuits.

Donor mascot Billy Blood Drop showed us colouring was fun -although Katy questioned how desperate a need there is for children who can’t give blood to have a mascot, especially one that paints with what looks like his own trippy blood, the psychotic blob – and bizarrely animated characters with rigor mortis are on hand in a demonstration designed to reinforce the high you get from reverse pumping your veins.

Billy Blood Drop bloody loves it

Katy said: “I’ve been quite a few times, it’s a bit quiet tonight but usually there’s lots of people, and they just show anything. Sometimes people bring quite a lot of techie stuff, things like programmes or software, but anyone can come.

“I come from a fine arts background and I just like to come to talk about an idea or show something I’ve made.”

A home made petri dish thingy used to do stuff to science

There was even a talk on how to make some kind of petri dish agitator. I didn’t care to ask the name of it, but that’s not the point. The night’s there just to show things, but what things? There must be an overall aim, I’m sure a cock wouldn’t go down well, and that’s something.

“It’s more about innovation rather than anything else,” Dominic clarified. “I’d be really happy if people turned up with paintings or knitting. As long as it’s done with an innovative process, then it’s fair game.”

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