Kelly Monico - Bitches n' Hoes

10.03.2013

"Bitches n' Hoes" was a collaboration in which I helped artist and friend Kelly Monico generate data for a commissioned gallery series. For my part, I was tasked to analyze the lyrical each song's content based on a custom set of rules that Kelly gave me. To accomplish this, I loaded each song's words into a custom Processing app and gamified the categorization of each word in a human-assisted process. The resulting images were built from the sorted word counts derived from the custom rules. Concepts like: good bitch/bad bitch, searching for specific, self-referencing, aggressive, and neutral words all contributed to the final result sets.

This series visually analyzes language used in three contemporary songs by female rappers -- "Stupd Hoe" by Nicki Minaj, "212" by Azealia Banks, and "Das Me" by Brooke Candy. Each time a a target word is used (in most cases derogatorily) a specific shape with applied color appears. Each shape within the work corresponds to a specific term or instance. This also includes first person words I, me, mine and my, and words that have no significance or measurable meaning. Screen-printed patterns in the series are inspired by the elaborate fingernails of the rappers.

This series was commissioned by Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art for the Craft Tech/Coded Media Exhibition in 2013. It was also exhibited at the "Rhythm Nations" exhibition at the IDEA space at Colorado College in Colorado Springs in 2014. The animation representing the mixed-media print for "212" was included in Monkeytown 4 in Denver, Colorado.

via KellyMonico.com

"212", "Das Me", and "Stupid Hoe". Each 60 x 40 inches, mixed media, 2013. Images courtesy of Kelly Monico.

Looping animation representing the lyrics for "212", by Kelly Monico, and a process shot of parsing the lyrics to "212", via my processing app.

Images courtesy of Julia Vandenoever

At Monkey Town 4

The "212" data viz animation was selected for the Monkey Town 4 dinner experience in Denver in 2014. Images courtesy of Westword.