The Data Twist

The Data Twist is a participatory art project that kinesthetically plays with survey data to promote public discourse−to be fully developed in workshops, deployed as a performative installation, and supported by a choreographic interface. The project’s dance games are designed to balance humor and discomfort in order to facilitate nonverbal debate in public settings. The structural similarities between the survey format of The Data Twist and the U.S. Census, elections, and polls presents the conditions for participants to civically exercise parrhesia or “fearless speech,” but in the nonverbal register of dance. By fostering embodied debate in a playful and inclusive way, The Data Twist invites people to discover their togetherness in difference through movement, rather than division.

The Data Twist, led by metaLAB Researcher and former Principal Lins Derry, has been made possible through Derry’s partnerships at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD), which include UMD’s Arts for All, the Maya Brin Institute for New Performance, and the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. metaLAB Affiliate Ilya Vidrin serves as the project’s dramaturg.