Over the course of his 17-year AFL career with the Sydney Swans, champion Indigenous player Adam Goodes’ performance on the field was tracked 10 times per second by a small device he wore on his back.

The vast data set, retained by the AFL and the Swans since Goodes retired in 2015, has now been deployed in a provocative, immersive, multimedia installation, Ngapulara Ngarngarnyi Wirra – or “Our Family Tree” in Adnyamathanha yura ngarwala (language) of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia.

Adam Goodes at the SWARM exhibition at the Science Gallery Melbourne this week.Credit:Eddie Jim

“I never really thought about it when I was playing, but I have a very different opinion of that tracking now,” the two-time Brownlow Medal winner tells The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

While all the information gathered from the field was aimed at enhancing the player’s future performances, Goodes says only about half-a-dozen of those outputs informed his individual key performance indicators: “Things like distance travelled, speed at certain times, number of sprints over 25 kilometres … But all this other data was being captured, too.”

Going through the four-year collaborative process to develop the installation helped Goodes understand how the data measured far more intimate details about him on the field – an environment that became increasingly confronting and exhausting emotionally at the tail end of his career as he was targeted with racist insults by spectators and high-profile AFL pundits alike.

“This data really is me in that moment, at that point in time, when all that stuff was going on. At the time, I didn’t realise that is what it was capturing. For me now, it is very personal [data],” Goodes says.

At the height of the torrent of abuse directed at him, Goodes took a hiatus from the playing field and returned home to Country, via two flights and a four-hour drive, to be with family, speak to respected cultural custodians, and to sit beside an ancient wirra, or tree, in a dry riverbed.

Ngapulara Ngarngarnyi Wirra repatriates Goodes’ on-field data set back to the traditional Adnyamathanha kinship system, and the same special site on Country. In doing so, the artwork raises interesting questions about the surveillance of Aboriginal bodies: who owns and retains the data, who is entitled to it, and how to return that data, the work’s creators say.

“What does it mean when data is not technically from Country as a place, but through the body? How do you return it in a way that isn’t just like, ‘here’s a thumbdrive – have a good time’,” asks internationally renowned digital artist Baden Pailthorpe.

Goodes and Pailthorpe – who has produced earlier work from player data sets retained by the AFL and the Sydney Swans Football Club – worked alongside Trawlwoolway woman Angie Abdilla, a designer, filmmaker and technologist.

Goodes (centre) with Angie Abdilla and and Baden Pailthorpe.Credit:Eddie Jim

“You look at Europe and what’s going on with data policies there – the way in which they’re trying to wrestle back some control of their data from the big tech corporations. I think we’re in a really unique position to observe and learn how these policies aren’t really going deep enough. We need to go much further to protect our data sovereignty. If you’re not paying for the service, you are the product,” Abdilla says.

The work uses artificial intelligence and data visualisation graphics to merge a moving image of the on-field data with a 3D digital reproduction of the 500-year-old wirra. The overall image is animated, revolving in a shifting landscape of data points as the sound of two winds – Ararru (north wind) and Mathari (south wind) – swirl around the exhibit.

After viewing the projection, viewers can step behind the image, as though entering the hollowed trunk of the tree, to listen to the Adnyamathanha Yura Muda (creation story) spoken in language by Goodes and Uncle Terrence Coulthard, who represent the two wind moieties.

Goodes says the work is part of a 20-year process of connecting back to his Aboriginal heritage.

“I grew up knowing I was Aboriginal, but not connected to Country,” he says. “Having that connection is about constantly learning more. Doing these projects is me asking more questions, having deeper and stronger relationships with my mothers and fathers back on Country, learning more of my language, rituals and protocols.

“Every time I stand in front of the data projection, listening to the wind and the language, I feel connected back. It takes me back to that special place.”

The installation is part of the Melbourne Science Gallery’s SWARM exhibition which explores what drives us as a species to be social. The work first appeared at South Australia’s Museum of Discovery earlier this year.

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