The Dumpster, detail from screen grab c. Golan Levin 2006

The Dumpster by Golan Levin in collaboration with Kamal Nigam and Jonathan Feinberg, visualises information using data from web logs to plot the romantic lives of teenagers, creating a dynamic, interactive map of relationship start-ups and break-downs.

Using data gathering and data analysis strategies the work creates a group portrait that illustrates relational formations, by drawing upon the popularity of social media platforms.

… in Levin’s group portrait, you are encouraged to navigate both horizontally, vertically, and diagonally between the particular and the general. You can, for example, simply click on different circles, jumping from one break-up case to another and randomly explore the overall data space. Or you can explore the circles that are similar in colour – which means that the corresponding postings are similar in some ways.

Lev Manovich, from Social Data Browsing, 2006

The viewer/reader is able to at once, view the components of the portrait through the examination of individual narratives and at the same time review their context within the larger group.

The Dumpster has been commissioned in collaboration with artport, the Whitney Museum of American Art's portal to net art.