In dialogue with Tiziana Alocci

From 4 September 2026, the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa will host Ninety Percent of Everything, a multi-channel installation based on data visualisation practices, which emerged from the artist residency organised by U-BOOT Lab and realised in collaboration with the collectives Fish Tank and Fathom 30°, alongside data artist Tiziana Alocci and the sound studio Stellare, with the contribution of photographer Simone Lezzi. The installation project came about following an international call for applications by U-BOOT Lab aimed at selecting artists for a residency curated by Maria Pina Usai, which took place from 15 to 30 May 2026 at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa, the operational port, the CNR-IRBIM experimental station and on board the cargo ship Grendi. This research project has emerged as a narrative of the port and maritime system as an infrastructure that connects ecologies, economies, labour, technologies and global consumption, offering a reversal of perspective, as the curator emphasises, ‘compared to an interpretation that views maritime logistics exclusively as a cause of environmental impacts, and invites us to question the role each of us plays in sustaining this system through our daily consumption choices’.

Leading the development of this visual language in a collaborative project was Tiziana Alocci, a Genoese data artist based in London, whose practice — described as a ‘poetic cartography of the present’ — has for years explored the boundary between scientific rigour and the emotional narration of data. We asked her how the transformation of normally invisible information — shipping routes, marine biodiversity, AIS communications — comes about to become a sensory experience capable of directly engaging those who encounter it, and how this evolves into a collaborative project.

E. G. Rossi: The exhibition at the Palazzo Ducale is due to open shortly, marking the culmination of a long-term project that has involved several stages leading up to its official launch. Could you tell us about this journey, starting with your personal background and moving on to the links with the various scientific organisations you collaborate with?

Tiziana Alocci: The exhibition at Palazzo Ducale does not mark the conclusion of a research project, but rather the beginning of a new phase in exploring and bringing to light the invisibility of an industry and the people who work within it: that of maritime transport.

I began visualising data almost 15 years ago, when I discovered this discipline whilst studying for my Master’s degree in Communication Design at the Politecnico di Milano. For years, I worked with reliable, concrete data – data that explained and confirmed phenomena that were certainly visible. I have never doubted the importance of research and the dissemination of data, but over the years I have become curious about their incompleteness and, at times, their obsolescence.

Open data [defined by the CAD (Digital Administration Code) as: “data available to everyone, accessible via digital technologies and free of charge”] is everywhere and easily downloadable, but some datasets, on closer inspection, are less comprehensive than one might imagine: data that has not been updated over time; indicators for which information is no longer collected; data lacking a gender breakdown; or a complete lack of data relating to certain ethnic minorities. We live in the age of data. Governments, businesses, institutions and individuals make decisions every day based on data. Yet we rarely ask ourselves a crucial question: what is missing?

These observations first took the form of a list on my computer and subsequently became a research project that found theoretical expression in my book Absent Data (published by Wiley) and practical expression in the exhibition Ninety Percent of Everything at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa.

Working with data is a multidisciplinary endeavour. In Ninety Percent of Everything, we have a fabulous team that brings together skills ranging from music to video-making, from coding to research, from writing to poetry, right through to the performing arts and photography. Working with data is not complex; communicating it is. For this reason, the interweaving of different disciplines offers an interpretation that is closer to the community’s experience.

You describe your practice as ‘behavioural cartography’. How does this approach translate in the case of Ninety Percent of Everything, given such diverse datasets (shipping traffic, marine biodiversity, workers’ testimonies)? What was the first step in transforming numbers and technical information into an audiovisual and emotional language?

The paradox of Ninety Percent of Everything is that we had access to an enormous volume of data, including real-time data. And not just numerical data, but qualitative data too: books, photographs, archive footage and interviews. A first step was to understand why the maritime freight industry – which, as Stefano Casini observes in the article Blue economy, new routes and scenarios for the maritime sector (2025), “accounts for 12 per cent of global GDP and almost 10 per cent of Italy’s” – remains completely invisible to the public, despite the enormous volume of data collected.

The British journalist Rose George, author of the book Ninety Percent of Everything (2014), asked herself the same question; she spent four months aboard a cargo ship travelling from the United Kingdom to Singapore. In her book, she highlights how maritime transport mainly makes the headlines in the event of tragedies or environmental disasters. Maritime transport has recently come to the attention of the general public due to the geopolitical crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. Yet, very little is still known about the people – crews and workers – who have been stranded on ships for months, such as the nearly 30,000 seafarers who have been stranded in the region for months, as reported in an article in the “Corriere della Sera” in July 2025.

Unfortunately, we still know far too little about seafarers’ working conditions, their rights and the sacrifices they make, and about an industry which, despite global instability and conflict, never stops: it must ensure that we can receive our Amazon parcel or purchase many of the items that surround us. Behavioural cartography deals precisely with this: investigating and visually mapping the invisible details of how people live today.

In the project, scientific and logistical data are interwoven with personal accounts gathered in the field. From your perspective as a data artist, what is the biggest challenge when ‘translating’ complex data into an experience that the public can engage with?

For me, the greatest challenge remains finding the right approach to get the message across to the public. For me, being an artist is neither a display of virtuosity, nor an elitist or overly autobiographical endeavour. I see myself as an amplifier and, through a practice based on research and data, I try, as far as possible, to bring to light and make visible stories and phenomena that would otherwise remain unseen. My practice is an act of communicating the contemporary, rather than an expression of the self.

The installation features displays that are updated in real time with AIS data from ships. What did it mean, and what does it mean, to work with ‘live’ and unpredictable data, rather than a static dataset?

For me, a dataset is never complete. In my TEDx talk ‘How sound data can recreate lost memories’ (Genoa, 2022), I spoke about data and how it can be compared to a photograph: a snapshot of a moment, framed by a human gaze which, through its own choices and decisions, has determined what to record and what not to. Every dataset reflects decisions, priorities, limitations and power relations. This ‘photograph’ of data allows us to observe phenomena and stories up close: data are our glasses for seeing the world more clearly. Real-time data, in my view, is what best helps the public understand just how much material is collected every day and how important it is to understand and communicate data: a fundamental skill, both for those who work with information and for those who are on the receiving end of it.

What should visitors to the exhibition expect?

That absence is a fact and that there are new ways of observing the world. Digital art, listening, research, participation and data-driven speculative practices generate forms of knowledge that complement traditional methods, making technologies more inclusive and accountable, and bringing invisible stories to the fore.