By Cate McQuaid
Artist Ekene Ijeoma finds the humanity in data points.
In “A Counting,” he turns the demographics of cities such as New York and St. Louis into sonic poems featuring crowdsourced recordings of locals counting to 100, continually remixed. In a video version, the numbers appear in native scripts. To contribute to a national edition, call 844-959-3197. Find it online at https://a-counting.us.
The artist runs the Poetic Justice group at MIT Media Lab, an interdisciplinary collective using art to cultivate new approaches to justice. “A Counting,” which started in 2019, is a Poetic Justice project.