[ON-LINE FORM]

The Shape of Change will examine independence, differentiation and identity in personal and political contexts through two projects: an online data-visualization exploring the evolving nature of the United States’ relationship with Iraq surrounding upcoming national elections; and a musical score generated by analyzing sound, image and movement data from the first few months of a new baby’s life. The online work will explore the development of sovereign political states; the performance work will investigate the creation of human subjectivity. Comparing the two will constitute a portrait of the nature of change and formation of identity.

The first phase of the project concerns Iraqi and American concepts of political change, independence and freedom, beginning with an on-line form that asks people several questions on the subjects. Answers are collected in an open content data base, to be accessed by American and Iraqi artists, who are invited create art works from the open source data. Collaborations are facilitated though the web site. The site will also feature data visualizations, functioning as evolving representations of change, to help people see how the concepts they are discussing are viewed by others and to consider them in new ways. To contribute to the project, please fill out the form here.

The second project will be an improvisational music performance created from a digital score, made by analyzing patterns of sound (speech), image (drawings), and movement (crawling, walking, running), data gathered during the 8th – 20th months of my new baby’s life in 2009. Data will be analyzed through custom software to create a series of 365 drawings that will constitute a musical score, to be interpreted and performed by musicians. By analyzing the evolving cycles and patterns, music and image will trace the child’s formation of his own individual agency.