Cultural data comprises the machine-readable traces left by and generated to describe the cultural productions emerging from the deliberate pursuit of art, as well as the people, organisations, and places that surround them. This panel aims to examine the affordances of intimate, experimental, even anomalous, interactions with cultural data, in order to highlight the plurality of narratives and modes of interpretation that it can generate. With presenters from within collecting institutions, in the academy, and acting as artist-investigators, it will consider the role of cultural data in digital collections and web interfaces beyond their immediate utility as documentary records. Cognisant of the mechanisms that determine the biases and exclusions of data structures, it will consider what opportunities there are for rethinking how data performs as a social and cultural lens, and how it might illuminate connections to the non-human world.

Dr Keir Winesmith is responsible for the delivery of the National Film and Sound Archives (NFSA)’s strategic digital roadmap, which develops the information and communication technology (products and services) to enhance discoverability and shareability of the national audiovisual collection. He joined the NFSA from the National Gallery of Australia, where he was the Tim Fairfax Head of Digital. Prior roles include Chief Technology Officer at Old Ways, New, an Indigenous-owned and managed social enterprise, and Director of Digital Experiences at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He is the co-author of the 2020 book The Digital Future of Museums, and he co-founded the Sydney Cultural Data Salon and is an inaugural mentor in the Australia Council’s CEO Digital Mentoring program.

https://keir.winesmith.co/about/

Rachel Fensham FAHA FRSA was a Professor of Dance and Theatre Studies at the University of Melbourne and the University of Surrey, and her research fields are performance, cultural history, and digital humanities. She was the lead CI for the Australian Cultural Data Engine (2021-2023) and is co-author with Tyne Sumner and Nat Cutter of Cultural Data: an Intimate Analytics of Cultural Collections (Routledge 2026). Other publications include the forthcoming Fabrications: Costume, Dance and Material Culture (OUP 2026), Movement: Theory for Theatre (Bloomsbury, 2021), and chapters on digital laboratories (Routledge 2023); on archives (Routledge 2016); and on costumes as data in Small Data is Beautiful (GSP 2023).

https://www.acd-engine.org/

Elvis Richardson is an artist, Lecturer in Visual Art and Design at Australian Catholic University, and founding editor of the Countess Report; a landmark, artist-led research project benchmarking gender representation and equity across Australian visual arts institutions. The Countess Report advocates for transparency, accountability, and diversity in the art sector. Recent writing includes "Artist to the Power of Mother," featured in the December Motherhood issue of Artlink.

www.elvisrichardson.com

www.countess.report

Mitchell Whitelaw is Professor of Design in the School of Art and Design at the Australian National University with interests in digital design and culture, data practices, more-than-human worlds and digital collections. His publications include Metacreation: Art and Artificial Life (MIT Press 2004), and articles in journals including Leonardo, Digital Creativity, Digital Humanities Quarterly, and Senses and Society. He has worked with institutions including the State Library of NSW, the State Library of Queensland, the National Archives and the National Gallery of Australia, developing "generous" interfaces to their digital collections. His current research investigates environmental and biodiversity visualisation, and digital design for a more-than-human world.

https://mtchl.net/bio/