With a head of silver hair and a matching short-trimmed beard, the 57-year-old data artist uses his hands as he talks, explaining how his work compares to role once served by religious institutions in small communities. “Church towers,” says Niemeyer, “used to ring bells when people got married or they passed away.” He adds, “They were full of information, and it was a public piece of information.” But now, Niemeyer says, too often data is privatized. “If you’re not an expert, it’s not so available, and I want to change that. I want to make sure it’s more available to everybody.”
Conversely, Salesforce, the multibillion dollar company that anchors the building where Niemeyer’s work is being displayed, is built on privatized data. And while the company isn’t as big as say, religion, it does have a hand in the majority of online transactions made. Acknowledging the conflict, Niemeyer says a friend told him that with this project he’s “subverting the tower.”
But Niemeyer hasn’t fully achieved his goals of artistic expression and accessibility. For example, he openly regrets not having an audio component to accompany the visualization. And while he’s pushing people to stop looking down into their cellphone-fixated silos for information, and to instead look up to see a more unifying set of data, viewers of the Salesforce Tower display won’t understand the meaning of each geometric shape unless they look at the key — which is on Niemeyer’s website. (And not everyone has access to the internet.)
Artist and UC Berkeley professor Greg Niemeyer. (Courtesy of Greg Niemeyer)
A constant inventor of ways to express data about the environment by using art, Niemeyer says he’s always looking at lights and displays, thinking about how powerful they’d be if they communicated something more meaningful. Especially this time of year.