Data as Experience: From Representation to Orientation

Data matter experientially: not only for what they show us, but for how they shape our attention and affect, conditioning the way we perceive our surroundings, others, and even ourselves. And yet, established representational approaches to data, which are centered on objectivity and accuracy, can obscure these experiential dimensions and limit our ability to reflect critically on what data do to us. Data are not simply representations of the world; they are points of orientation within it.

Grounded in first-person accounts of collaborative work constructing public data settings—around environmental concerns, such as sea level rise, wildlife preservation, and microplastic pollution—this talk offers an experiential theory of data across five dimensions: settings, attention, affect, interaction, and aesthetics. This theory reframes both discourse and design for data as well as data-driven systems, including emerging AI models. It shifts the central question of data from representation (what do data show us?) to orientation (how do we orient ourselves in relation to data?).

The event is followed by a reception. It is organised by the Department of Digital Humanities and the Centre for Digital Culture at King's College London. The talk will be followed by a workshop by Yanni on "Drawing Your Own Maps / Making Public Data Settings" on Friday 4th December 2026, 3-5pm.

About the Speaker:

Yanni Alexander Loukissas explores how data shape and are shaped by their settings through the development of critical methods and theory that challenge the myth of digital universalism. With an interdisciplinary background in social research, computing, and architecture, he brings a spatial perspective to Science and Technology Studies scholarship on data and AI infrastructures. Loukissas is the author of All Data Are Local: Thinking Critically in a Data-Driven Society (MIT Press, 2019), which explains how to analyze "data settings" rather than data sets, and the forthcoming book, Data as Experience (MIT Press, 2027), examining data as points of orientation in the world, rather than simply representations of it. Loukissas holds a BArch from Cornell University, as well as an MS and PhD in Design and Computation from MIT. He is currently an Associate Professor of Digital Media in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication and Executive Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Media Arts at Georgia Tech.