Mark Lumsden: Pop-Up Data Centre

Time Frame: Oct 2025

This activity involved different members of the MA cohort working in 3 different pairs of students over a three week period. Initally, when students were paired up for the first time, each student was asked to create a set of written instructions and then give these instructions to their partner, who in turn, had to read and respond to their partners instructions (translating them into an incomplete artwork) and bring their response back to the art building a week later.

Below were my list of instructions for my selected partner (Yujie) in the first week activity.

1. Visit https://www.random.org/
2. In the "True Random Number Generator" form (see red box below), fill in '1' as the min value and '999'* as the max value. Click 'Generate'.

   

3. Using the random number generated in the previous step, go to the library and find the shelves which have books with the same number under the Dewey Decimal class system.
4. Count the number of books in that class.
5. Put '1' in the 'Min' box of the Random Number Generator and the total number of books you counted into the 'Max' box. Click 'Generate'.
6. Using the newly generated number, select the book which is that number from the lowest numbered book in that class.
7. Using the book you have selected, fill in the Number Generator form with the lowest page and highest page number of the book in 'Min' and 'Max' boxes repectively. Click Generate.
8. Using the newly generated number, open the book at that page. If the page is blank, run the number generator again, until you select a non-blank page.
9. Use the text from this page you have randomly selected to derive an artwork.

* 999 is the highest number in the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system.

I receved Caitlan Croft's written instructions. Caitlan provided hand-written text on A4 paper from a sketch book.

I felt Caitan's piece of writing was about loyalty, almost undying loyalty. My response to her text was a question and QR code printed on the same piece of paper which she had written her text on. For me the natural response was to ask the question, how far should loyalty go?