05.31.2006

Commentary , Noteworthy , Programming

State of the Union, Deconstructed

Think of the President's State of the Union Address as the nation's zeitgeist for the pulsepoints of the American people. (Okay, so in some cases, you may have to read between the lines a bit.) And so it makes for rich material for new media artists. Brad Borevitz's State of the Union is an elegant, spare Processing-based piece that displays the most frequently used words in the State of the Union address and individually assigns a visual weight based on their frequency. (By the way, Brad credits Daniel Schiffman for the syllable counting algorithm. Schiffman is a fellow ITP alum.) The State of the Union Parsing Tool allows users to compare words or phrases across various SOTU addresses by Groge W. Bush and a few other presidents. For instance, take a look at the comparison of the words terror and education. I think this is pretty self-explanatory.

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