TYPE: Competition
LOCATION: Ville Saint-Laurent, Montreal
CLIENT: Ville Saint-Laurent
TEAM: Andrew Chung
LOCATION: Ville Saint-Laurent, Montreal
CLIENT: Ville Saint-Laurent
TEAM: Andrew Chung
Mnémonique is a video installation that illustrates the history of Ville Saint-Laurent and gives a voice to all those passionate about the Borough. The project relies upon two streams of information. The first, US, is comprised of the collective data or history of Ville Saint-Laurent. The second, YOU, comes from data submitted by the general public. The sources are filtered and combined into the centre of the church, meshing history with present day associations.
US
The largest repository for information pertaining to the history, associations, and activities of Ville Saint Laurent is the internet. A Google query for the term ‘Ville Saint Laurent’ returns over 17 million results. Using the open source program Processing, Mnémonique trolls the web finding text associated with the keyword ‘Ville Saint-Laurent.’ On each web page where Mnémonique locates the keyword “Ville Saint-Laurent” it indexes 10 words before and 10 words after the keyword, all other text is culled. Parsing through the text, Mnémonique culls articles and conjunctions. With the remaining text a word frequency count is executed, revealing the most frequent words associated with Ville Saint-Laurent.
YOU
YOU allows anyone to submit words to Mnémonique. Users can text, Tweet, or Facebook post words they think best describes Ville Saint-Laurent. These words are data-based by Mnémonique. Whenever matching words are found between different users they join the data stream.
TOGETHER
Mnémonique is a dynamic installation that will constantly evolve and change over the course of the summer. The most frequent words occurring in the data will be projected in a kinetic tapestry displayed in the middle of the church. The more frequent a word, the greater prominence it has on the display. The most frequent words will be displayed in a magenta hue with a larger text, while those with lesser frequency will have a yellow hue with smaller text. Because this is a real-time installation (trawling the web and receiving user input) the frequency of a word will change constantly, morphing the display and creating an evolving perception of the
words we use to describe Ville Saint-Laurent.
US
The largest repository for information pertaining to the history, associations, and activities of Ville Saint Laurent is the internet. A Google query for the term ‘Ville Saint Laurent’ returns over 17 million results. Using the open source program Processing, Mnémonique trolls the web finding text associated with the keyword ‘Ville Saint-Laurent.’ On each web page where Mnémonique locates the keyword “Ville Saint-Laurent” it indexes 10 words before and 10 words after the keyword, all other text is culled. Parsing through the text, Mnémonique culls articles and conjunctions. With the remaining text a word frequency count is executed, revealing the most frequent words associated with Ville Saint-Laurent.
YOU
YOU allows anyone to submit words to Mnémonique. Users can text, Tweet, or Facebook post words they think best describes Ville Saint-Laurent. These words are data-based by Mnémonique. Whenever matching words are found between different users they join the data stream.
TOGETHER
Mnémonique is a dynamic installation that will constantly evolve and change over the course of the summer. The most frequent words occurring in the data will be projected in a kinetic tapestry displayed in the middle of the church. The more frequent a word, the greater prominence it has on the display. The most frequent words will be displayed in a magenta hue with a larger text, while those with lesser frequency will have a yellow hue with smaller text. Because this is a real-time installation (trawling the web and receiving user input) the frequency of a word will change constantly, morphing the display and creating an evolving perception of the
words we use to describe Ville Saint-Laurent.
