Anna Barlik, Michał Strzała and Jacek Sosnowski are representing Poland at the 18th Venice Biennale of Architecture with the Datament exhibition.

The monumental sculpture by Anna Barlik (7 tons, 3 kms of steel tubes and hundreds of elements) allows visitors to experience data in its “material” form. It illustrates conceptual models of architectural constructions derived from available data. In today’s world, data has arguably replaced direct sources of experience.

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.