Errors are as much a part of an individual as they are of a wider community, but through the course of history their meaning has changed from a synonym of sin and distance from God to an inevitable stage of scientific progress that awards us with unexpected scenarios.

However, with the advent of machines, man has begun to face a new family of errors that we could call “pure” because they can not be blamed on any specific factor. So it may be that by observing a computer-generated error we are fascinated by its expressive power, by the cold magic, which we humans recognize as an alternative form of beauty.

A fascination that led Giovanni Magni, information designer and head of Data Visualization at Accurat, to explore the limits that define man and machine and investigate the phenomena of errors and data loss.

The sixteen panels in the exhibition are based on different sources. They are the result of cyclical processes that are activated in order to navigate the complexity of the data, making them comprehensible. Taken as a whole, the work shows four macro families: radar charts – diagrams that allow multiple data to be represented simultaneously; matrixes – which represent the correlation between two indicators; value flows, geographical and spatial representations – such as those related to meteorological data.

Giovanni Magni

Giovanni Magni is an information designer with a background as a developer. He designs editorial and digital experiences that allow us to understand and explore data.

He has worked with Italian and foreign companies such as IBM, Starbucks and the Triennale di Milano, as well as magazines such as Scientific American. He is currently Head of Data Visualization at Accurat, a design studio founded in Milan in 2011 and based in New York. In recent years he has won several awards including the Kantar – IIB Award and the Digital Design Days Award.