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January 19, 2008
 
*** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ***
 
PROJECT:    State of the Union
URL:            <http://stateoftheunion.onetwothree.net>
CONTACT:   Brad Borevitz, (415) 513-8822, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]

 
 
STATE OF THE UNION WEBSITE EXPLORES
THE LANGUAGE OF ADDRESSES 1790-2008
Software Art Project by Brad Borevitz
 
San Francisco, CA ­­ President George W. Bush's final State of the Union
address will be analyzed as well as televised thanks to the State of the
Union website, a software art project by Brad Borevitz. The address is
scheduled to be delivered to Congress and the American people by the
President on January 28th. Within an hour after the text of the speech is
released, visitors to the website at http://stateoftheunion.onetwothree.net
will be able to see the results.
 
State of the Union provides searchable access to the corpus of all the State
of the Union addresses from 1790 to the present. Using visualization
software, the site allows a user to explore how specific words gain and lose
prominence over time, and to link to information on the historical context.
State of the Union focuses on the relationship between individual addresses
as compared to the entire collection of addresses, highlighting what is
different about the selected document. From this information, users are
invited to try and understand the connection between politics and
language­between the state we are in, and the language which names it and
calls it into being.
 
As we are in the midst of a presidential campaign, and the vagaries of
political rhetoric flood the media, it is especially important this year to
be able to analyze and understand how politicians use words to court us, to
convince us, and ultimately to gain access to positions of power and
control. Lamenting the triumph of iconicity over rhetoricity, Borevitz
describes the gradual changes in political speech from argument to brand.
The project asks us to consider if evidence for this assertion exists in the
language of the State of the Union address which stands as a controlled
sample of political speech over the course of U.S. history.
 
Brad Borevitz is an artist whose work focuses on language, politics and
software. He has produced websites, videos, software applications, and
robots, all of which have at their core a deep commitment to understanding
the political and cultural implications of computer technology. He is a
recent participant in the Whitney Museum of American Art's Independent Study
Program and holds an MFA in Visual Arts from the University of California
San Diego.

The State of the Union website is at
<http://stateoftheunion.onetwothree.net>.
 
### 
Note: For further information, or to request an interview with the artist,
please contact Brad Borevitz at (415) 513-8822 or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
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