Jordan Shaw

(in)visible

(in)visible Series

The (in)visible series encompasses video, static image works, and real-time visualizations, exploring the concept of data as material. The work is similar to Shaw's Pulses series, revealing the invisible digital ecosystem that surrounds us daily. It is an ongoing series that captures and documents digital traffic from various locations, creating data portraits of specific places and times. Like photography or video that preserves visual and time-based moments, (in)visible archives ephemeral digital traces that would otherwise remain unwitnessed. These traces—continuously broadcast by personal devices—raise subtle questions about privacy in an age of ubiquitous connectivity. The work invites viewers to reconsider the layered reality we inhabit, where digital signals pulse constantly around us, silently mapping our collective presence.

In the video version, real-time BLE (smart device) data is overlaid onto streaming video, with particles reacting to optical flow, representing the movement of data sources like phones, cars, and watches. In the image-based iteration, prints feature signal dots overlaid on static backgrounds. The colour of each dot is pulled from the image at its location, with the dot size representing the signal strength and the width of the image corresponding to a specific time frame—usually 60 seconds. Each row of dots represents the signal strength (RSSI) of a single device over that time. The real-time version provides dynamic, interactive visualizations, immersing the viewer in the invisible data networks that surround them. This work brings digital experiences to life, physically manifesting the invisible data that shapes our world.