Data Visualisation as Documentary

How can govenment databases be a vehicle for mass participation art projects that critically encourage with society?

Govenment database management systems store enormous amounts of quantitative data about the people in the UK. They have the potential to be re-purposed into an innovative and vital collaboration between art and public bodies, enabling people to visualise and understand for example health, its longer term patterns and its position within a wider, historically situated urban context. This collaboration could also allow people to critically reflect on behaviour changes that could improve their own and their families health and well being. Simultaneously, it would encourage reflection on the methods used for the acquisition of data, the comparative methods used on such data and how the information and knowledge acquired effects the lives of those that it depicts.