While I enjoy the construction process, the whole purpose of the Worthy project is to display provocative content for Burning Man attendees to consider and vote on. Below are nine candidates for the 14 available positions on the piece’s curved wall.
Choosing content has been more difficult than I had expected. I could easily choose 14 subjects that I feel passionate about, but then the entire project would evaluate how attendees are like me. (That would be boring for many!) Instead I want subjects from these categories:
- Subjects that I think should be important to all
- Subjects that I think should be unimportant to all
- Subjects that I don’t find important, but many others probably do
- Subjects that I find important, but many others probably don’t
Below is one of the first subjects that I chose. I was reading the paper, which on January 14, 2015, still had articles related to the prior week’s Charlie Hebdo attack. And then there was this:
The piece will not show the same context that I saw, and people at Burning Man do like their costumes, so I’m curious to see the results.
Not all celebrity news is shallow. This article comments on how a certain rapper treated a then 19-year-old musician who was accepting a Best Female Video award early in her career. Given the people involved, I don’t expect that everyone will agree that this is something to care about.
Choosing subjects that are important to many others should be easy. Just look at the newspaper sections. Here’s Sports:
Here are a few items that I think are important. I’m curious to see who else agrees.
Here are three subjects that I’m less certain of. As it is presented now, this is my least favorite, and it may not be in the final selection. There’s room for a sentence or two to disambiguate the subject, and I think that’s what’s needed. Perhaps something related to the increasing popularity of personal drones and their effect on privacy.
Here’s another one that I’m less certain of. It’s an indirect way to encourage folks to break the usual one-person-one-vote rule and press the buttons as many times as they want:
This subject is growing on me since I replaced a snapshot of the web site for Donald Trump’s presidential run with this particular photo.
So that’s nine subjects of 14.
Some other candidates are
- Voter Participation
- Climate Change
- Top causes of death, ranked, with Terrorism in its (low) place
- Something religious or spiritual
- Some recent Science News
- Business news
- The Eurozone