Fathom, a site-specific, permanent installation by Camille Utterback, is now on view at Stanford. Commissioned for Stanford’s new Computing and Data Science (CoDa) building and installed in the building’s five-story windowed stairwell, Fathom comprises five triangular panels that reference human and material histories of representing, encoding, and interpreting data. The interactive installation is illuminated by the sun during the day, and animated after dark with live computer-generated projections that respond to the presence and movement of people in the building.
Each of the hand-painted and etched panels that comprise Fathom depicts a different example of encoded data, from Incan Khipu knots used for record keeping and punch cards used to program Jacquard looms, to historic astronomical charts and contemporary computer simulations of dark matter. Utterback, who is a Stanford faculty member, developed the wide variety of imagery depicted in Fathom in collaboration with the university’s research community. Sources include the Stanford University Archaeology Collections, the David Rumsey Map Center, Green Library Special Collections, and Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology faculty.
“For me, this is a metaphor for spending time trying to “fathom” anything in our world,” says Utterback. “Understanding is a process that happens over time. We have to engage and look deeply and use our bodies, no matter what we try to understand in the world around us.”
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