A data vizualization artwork that ranks and comments on the popularity of America's reality television shows through their social media exposure.

An artwork by
Katherine Moriwaki and Jonah Brucker-Cohen - 2012


(Mac OSX Standalone Version)

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Read the "America's Got No Talent" Newspaper

"America's Got No Talent" is a web-based artwork by Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine Moriwaki that continually synthesizes and processes the steady stream of Twitter feeds for several American reality television shows including "American Idol", "America's Got Talent", "America's Next Dance Crew","America's Most Wanted", "America's Next Top Model", "The X Factor USA" and more in the genre. The project highlights when and how these shows gain notoriety through social media and followers by dynamically displaying when tweets are sent and how much bias is gathered for each program based on retweets from followers as well as fans. The project creates a "Tweetback Loop" that retweets mentions of these shows by the public in order to rate how popular the shows are, thus creating more hype and buzz for the shows themselves. The visualisation takes the form of a horizontal bar graph in the shape of an American flag that updates dynamically. Each show's virtual presence grows in size based on the amount of attention it receives from social media users worldwide creating a measurement meter that ranks popular media on their social exposure, rather than their credit as viable media sources.

Commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art for its artport website, 2012.