I like data, and I like indexing information. Here’s a project I’ve been noodling on for a couple of years and am now getting it into high gear: The Mass Project— an effort to observe Catholic Mass at every church in Chicago while collecting information about how the Mass is celebrated.
Similar to my Wide Right Turns project, where I capture and index signs on the backs of trucks, the focus is on documenting variation. In almost all endeavors involving millions of people— whether it is worship or recovery or traffic or Girl Scouts— there is a central corpus of rules, and then there is the local expression of those rules. Real behavior, real environments is what interests me. The variations are the thing.
I kind of has a breakthrough today— the simple act of indexing a clear set of information around architecture, music, and ritual is at the core here. More to come. Here’s an image from today:
