Datament, a monumental installation at the Polish Pavilion for the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, will allow visitors to experience data in its physical form. The space of the pavilion will include with the frames of four life-size houses. These seemingly chaotic and absurd structures faithfully reproduce the source data. The exhibition is a starting point for a discussion about how, while new technologies may not offer us ready-made solutions, they can help us ask better questions.

Datament is the record of a dialogue between an artist and an architect. Anna Barlik works in visual art, local contexts, colour and composition. Marcin Strzała is an architect who explores the relationship between digital data and their physical manifestation in design. Together with curator Jacek Sosnowski, they have developed a structure based on digital data analysis. The title’s neologism, Datament, conveys the idea of the ubiquitous data establishment that is constantly shaping the reality in which we live, create and dwell. “We share a world with data. Believing in their infallibility, we let algorithms calculate and design our houses and cities. However, without a sensitive and conscious designer, digitally processed data can create distorted solutions, such as those presented in the Polish Pavilion,” say the creators of the installation.