Data Mine: A year of fact-checking on self

Cory’s internet addiction has become a problem. He’s playing endless rounds of Web Boggle until the wee hours, watching untold numbers of cat videos, and ranting in chat rooms about arcane details of Civil War history. His work as a programmer is suffering. He’s become one of those pasty-skinned, soft-middled computer trolls he always crossed the street to avoid in college.

But his love for computers is true. He longs for purity in code, elegance in design, and flawless, bug-free programs. A wake-up call comes in the form of a late-night experiment. Cory decides to track all the cat videos he’s watched, map them, then rank them according to their proximity to his hometown of Newton, Iowa, where his own beloved cat Frady is laid to rest.

The result is a beautiful constellation of data. So lovely, in fact, that Cory prints it out and frames it.

And thus a project is born.

Each day for a year, Cory creates a new work of art born of data compiled and related to his life.

He charts his body weight, the provenance of each coffee he drinks, the known locations of ex-girlfriends and lovers, the number of steps he’s taken and miles driven, every purchase made on a debit card, the nutritional content of his mother’s favorite recipes, his own heartbeat over the course of one day.

A lithograph tracking his own trash becomes a starburst of delight. A list a family members ranked by near-sightedness becomes an intimate genealogical portrait.

Each day of information yields an aesthetic challenge, to visually transform the mundane into the mystic and profound. And each set of data brings him closer to a truth about using computers and the internet: the impersonal can become the most personal, if you let it.

One Foot in Front of the Other: A year on the tightrope

On an engagement party trip in Mexico, Priscilla discovered her fear of heights. Her fiance had a vision to propose to her at the top of a Yucatan jungle bridge, then bungee jump off of it. But, she was too scared. Add that to the list of her countless other phobias: spiders, big rig trucks, crowds, white pants. Cowering at the bridge railing, she found could not live up to her promise to her fiance to "take more risks." At least, not this one. The incident proved fatal to the wedding plans, leading Mr. Almost Right to declare, months later: "I just don't think anyone who truly knew herself would have balked at that bridge." Yikes.

After weeks sobbing at her mother's kitchen table Priscilla ventured up into the attic, on a mission of self knowledge. What did she find but a box of photos, sepia toned. Among them a portrait of derring do if ever there was: A young woman with bobbed, curly hair, perched in mid-air on a rope, a balancing stick held straight across her waist. Calm, cool, confident, she was everything Priscilla longed to be. Who was the tightrope walker? None other than her great great aunt Cristina.

Days later Priscilla tied a rope between two elm trees in her childhood back yard, felt her feet burn as the fiber dug into her flesh, and fell off before she took even one step.

But by the end of week two she'd made it across once, no falls, and a project had begun.

On sabbatical from her Ph.D. program in Performance Studies at NYU, Priscilla took a year to walk in the footsteps of an eccentric family member, and find physical and emotional confidence on the ropes. Her year of precarious balance culminates with a public performance that will make everyone gasp. 

A Year in Tongues

Abby Deneil takes a dream vacation to Brazil, and sees the dreamiest guy on the beach, chopping open fresh coconuts with a long machete and sticking a straw in them with a smile. Their eyes meet; there's instant chemistry. But neither says a thing. He speaks no English, she no Portuguese. Abby sips her coconut in stupor. Months later, haunted by the specktor of her might have been perfect match, Abby vows to never again miss a chance at love because she can't say that most basic word: hello. Every day for a year, Abby learns a few key phrases of a new language.

Hello.

How are you?

Do you want to have coffee?

I love you.

More.

Goodbye.

First up, of course, is Portuguese. Your standard romance languages follow. But it isn't until Abby ventures into the realms of Kwakitul and Xhosa that the internal sparks really start to fly. Follow our budding linguist as she discovers the deeper meanings and nuance of human communication over a year of languages, twisting her tongue - and her mind - in unexpected ways. Of course she learns, in a culminating trip back to Rio, that what remains unsaid between people can be the most powerful communication of all.

Stitch in Time: One Year Sewing the Fabric of Life

"A Stitch in Time" documents Cassie Balder's year-long journey into the past, through patterns. Cassie never knew her grandmother, who lived across the ocean in Paris. When grammy passed away, Cassie didn't feel the loss. In fact, between a doctoral thesis on the history of women’s suffrage and her recent engagement to a nature photographer, Cassie can't manage to care much about anything having to do with family. But an accidental trip to her mother’s West Virginia attic changes that. Beyond the dust and questionable pick-a-ninny Christmas decorations, Cassie finds her grandmother's 1920s sewing table, reams of vintage fabric, and a filing cabinet full of patterns from several decades in French fashion. 

She hauls it all back to Brooklyn, determined to tackle the patterns one by one, and wear everything she sews. She even hatches a plan to sew her own wedding gown for her pending nuptials.

All thumbs, and all grunts from her Boston Terrier, Beckham, who keeps jumping on the sewing pedal, Cassie can't seem to stitch a straight line. But with each spool of thread she forges a bond with her ancestors, and sees the history of "women's work" in a whole new light. From donning a crooked circle skirt to an engagement party, to defending an academic paper in a wonky Suzie Wong number, Cassie learns not only who she is, but how to wear it. And as she stays up until dawn finishing her wedding dress, she realizes that when it comes to life, there is no pattern.

Varmint! A Year of Hunting Small Game

Shortly after breaking up with his girlfriend of three years, up-and-coming accountant Ben Biggman gets a visit from his uncle Leon that changes his life. Ben's lady barely has her teapot collection and two cats moved out of the apartment, when Leon shows up with his collection of vintage muskets, rifles, arrow quivers and a blood hound. Having heard about the heartbreak, Leon makes it his mission to give Ben a new purpose in life (and also to sleep on the living room futon since he's been laid off from the window factory).

Ben comes home from a particularly grueling tax season day to find a skinned, dead animal of specious origin on his stove, browning in a cast iron skillet. "It's good eatin! One hundred per cent organic and natural, certified!" shouts Leon at seeing Ben's nose and mouth all wrinkled up together.

Soon the two are on a quest to track every edible small mammal in the woods outside Cleveland. From gopher to wood vole, they kill and eat them one by one. Ben's bookkeeper sensibility ensures each critter is fully tested for disease and its location geotagged, while Leon perfects his recipe for Brunswick stew. By the time four seasons have passed Leon's got a good little catering business going, and Ben's learned to live off the land with just a rifle and his sharpened wits.