If there were one word to describe the area you live in, what would it be? New York based composer and visual artist R. Luke DuBois went to great lengths to get us the sometimes predictable, sometimes surprising answers.
By joined 21 online dating sites (luckily not out of desperation) and downloading about 19 million peoples online survey answers, he was able to analyze and sort their information by zip code. He then looked at what descriptive words popped up most frequently.
DuBois then hand traced an old Rand McNally road map, leaving just the borders, roads and rivers; all the town and city names he replaced with the word for the area. What resulted was a self-descriptive look at the entire US using some 20,000 unique words. It’s an interesting, if not general, look at the attitudes around the nation. Explore the rest of the series here.
Below: an excerpt from the film “R. Luke DuBois: Running Out of Time,” in which DuBois describes the process and his thoughts behind the project.
Miami, Florida
New York City, New York
San Francisco, California
Via: flowingdata.com
