Hedwig and the Angry Inch: Who we once were or currently are, isn’t who we always have to be

Designing for Live Performance

Simple Sentence: Hedwig & The Angry Inch is about the conflicts of self-identification.

Complex Sentence: Hedwig & The Angry Inch is about how we shed the expectations of others and the identities imposed on our bodies to find self-acceptance.

Concept

Theatre is out, debauchery is in. While previously a [flourishing doll-factory OR famed theatre featuring the 10-year run of ‘Barbie: The Musical TBD’], the Belasco has since fallen into disrepair. In an abandoned state, it’s been co-opted by the local “weirdos”:  a home for squatters, a dance hall for clubbers, a thunderdome for exiles. Within this space that’s at odds with itself, Hedwig and her partner Yitzhak reconcile their own corporeal-vs-self identities and the expectations thrust upon them by others. The physical space and complimentary projections exacerbate this question of fragmented, unstable and changing identity through distortion, reflectivity, and juxtaposition. Ultimately, our heroes find and define themselves not to satisfy social norms, but their own best desires.

Who we once were or currently are, isn’t who we always have to be.

Visual Research

Data Self-Portrait

Data Art

My self-portrait is composed of daily photographs of three things: the sky, a dog, a selfie from my mother. I’ve documented these photos in two ways: one as a flipbook in which the order is determined by the time of day the photos were taken and the other as a video in which the images are grouped by category.

Take Me To: Tracerouted Streetviews

Understanding Networks

When routing to a website, a number of intermediate hops occur across other networks. Tracerouting exposes the IP address of these enroute hops — and when coupled with registration information, a physical location and organization can be found. I’ve been developing a site (not yet live) which couples these registration addresses with corresponding street view images of the physical locations.

Networks are often discussed as immaterial —the so-called cloud. Take Me To attemps to reinforce the physicality of vast network infrastructures. Rather than proceeding directly to a particular website, Take Me To traceroutes the final destination and displays each hop with the corresponding Google Streetview. Upon reaching the final destination, the user can proceed to the intended website.

The process videos below show the trace routes from two different physical locations (721 Broadway and my apartment in Brooklyn) to two different websites (my portfolio and daringfireball.net). Each video frame maps to 1ms, so the length of videos are proportional to the tracerouting duration. They reveal the pervasiveness of certain telecommunications companies such as Level 3 and Verizon which become a funnel for many sites.