Under the soaring, skeletal white wings of the now-iconic transit hub and shopping center in Lower Manhattan, a river of seemingly random points of white light sweeps across a ground of black, circling a vast ring of loosely woven metal mesh that’s 10 feet tall and 37 feet in diameter. Despite its size, the structure appears almost to hover just above the ground, the architecture of the space slightly visible through the screen. The images seem to crackle as they pass. Gradually these specks and streaks of visual noise coalesce into shimmering ribbons of colored light bathed in iridescence, an oasis of tranquility amid the New York City throng. Then it starts all over again, a new cycle of increasingly harmonious imagery.
This is Signals From the Noise, artist and engineer Karyn Nakamura’s multimedia artwork that transforms a vast amount of financial market data into a stunning display. Commissioned by T. Rowe Price, it is also a metaphor: Just as Nakamura synthesizes beauty from the raw material of market data, T. Rowe Price’s portfolio managers apply creativity and insight to craft their actively managed exchange-traded funds (ETFs), helping to turn market noise into investment opportunities.
“When someone stands in front of the installation, I’d like them to experience the richness and complexity of data and the multifaceted nature of it,” Nakamura says. “There’s also a lot of creativity that goes into these processes that people have developed to filter, process, and analyze data.”
Read more via WIRED.
