Tahir used information gleaned from his hip hop database to create a series of work on view in the exhibition at California College of the Arts, entitled “Mapper’s Delight.” Through 3D printed sculptures, screenprints, drawings, book projects, and an interactive Virtual Reality experience, the exhibition investigates the role systems play in the generation of form and how the data drawn from a linguistic analysis of hip hop reveal a layer of aesthetics that are music related yet non-musical. In conjunction with the exhibition, Hemphill will lead his Rap Research Lab in collaboration with local youth, and he will give an artist talk on September 28 at CCA.
“People should care about data,” Tahir told us in our Artist Profile video. “People should care about the ethics of data. Especially data that’s extracted from the community. Questioning what the relationship or ownership of that data is helps create a sensitivity for the culture.”
Click here for more info about Tahir’s exhibition “Mapper’s Delight.”