How do we know who we are? Reimaging government data through the digital arts

Citizens have a right to actively participate in making knowledge about the societies of which they are a part and opening them to democratic contestation, intervention and reinvention.

he 'Who Are We?' programme provoked us to intervene in fundamental questions about who decides, classifies and ascribes who are ‘we’ as Europeans. Our contribution approached these questions in relation to digital technologies and data, which are increasingly part of making up who we are and how we are known by governments, corporations and software and app developers. Our contribution brought together our different interests and approaches to this issue.

For Evelyn, a sociologist, how European Union member states are mobilising new digital technologies and data to innovate statistical practices in order to know the 'European population' is a focus of her current research project, ARITHMUS.

For Dawid, a digital designer, how digital interaction and design enable people to participate in the making of data and visualisations is a concern of his various projects. We brought our interests together by imagining a digital installation that could respond to a question provoked by the programme: how do we know who we are?