JILL TOWNSLEY

The Forever-Do project, explores the idea of "fishing" into data sets in order to extract coherent patterns of data that are represented in visual artworks. The Project was developed as a collaboration between computer science researcher Carlo Ferigato from the Joint Research Centre (JRC), Italy. The JRC is the European Commission's science and knowledge service which employs scientists to carry out research in order to provide independent scientific advice and support to EU policy. The SciArt project intends to integrate art in the JRC's multidisciplinary work on an equal footing. Jill has been an artist expert for the EU Commission since June 2018, and was artist in residence at the JRC during the first 6 months of 2019.

The Forever-Do Game is a socially relational public happening, played during the Milan Digital Week in March 2019, participants physically flowed through a network inspired by a simple Petri Net system. Petri Nets were introduced by Carl Adam Petri in the 1970s. One simple net is the "bucket chain". It represents two fundamental aspects of data flow: selection and transfer.

As the game was played, a sculptural installation emerged, consisting of piles of boxes – "data-towers". The order and colour of the stacked boxes provided a binary code that was used to inform the flow of colour through a separate, modular structure the Forever-Do Infestation.

Each box also has an RFID tag, the whole installation is monitored by 6 antenna placed around the edge. The position of each of the 2000 boxes is tracked live on two screens.