Day-to-Day Data exhibits the work artists who seek inspiration from insignificant details in their own or the publics’ everyday lives – artists who use daily experience as research material from which to obtain their data. This section of the website provides a context for the way these artists work and considers the continuing relevance of work inspired by day-to-day life.

A great champion of the minutiae of life is the French writer Georges Perec. In his essay The Infra-Ordinary he pleads for the necessity to observe, contemplate and analyse the things we see around us day in, day out. He urges us to consider the significance of the actions, objects and experiences that we take for granted each day, as he believes them to be the only things in life we can ever hope to understand. It is impossible to perceive the entirety of the world because of the distant, removed way in which we, as individuals, view it. It seems logical that the things we have most contact with are the things of which we have greater knowledge. It is therefore possible to see why everyday life is an instinctive focus of the Day-to-Day Data artists’ work.

Through the application of a scientific or methodical approach to objects, events or experiences which a normal scientist (or normal person, for that matter) may well overlook, the Day-to-Day Data artists create an absurd or humorous new vision of the everyday life we are all accustomed to.
Day-to-Day Data Context