White acrylic ink on mirror, in collaboration with Rodrigo Derteano.

“1986” is a data art object on the topic of cocaine, presenting data from newspaper article headlines during a pivotal year in the history of substance abuse in the USA.

This project is a remix of Rodrigo Derteano’s earlier work, which was created from a search for the appearance of the word “cocaine” in New York Times article titles from 1900 to 2014. In this data set, the year 1986 was the single year that had the most occurrences of the word in article titles, which led me to zoom in on that year and present its data in a focused light. It was arguably the year when popular consciousness of the risks of cocaine abuse became broadly evident, also considered by some to be the year that the crack epidemic began, and frequently cited as a milestone year for the so-called “war on drugs.”

Derteano’s original work had presented the word cocaine and the adjacent word or words. “1986” presents just the adjacent words, using his original visualization as its guide. The word cocaine is absent, as if it has already been ingested. This plays on the double-take effect of this piece–the audience is likely to have already figured out its subject before getting any of the detail. And observation of its tiny, handwritten detail practically requires that you get your face very close to the mirror. The words written on the mirror are:

                       as a
                       on boat
                       ring
       eating
                       corruption
    smuggling
                       crackdown
treatment for
                       is found
                       smuggler's
                       tests
                       customers
                       set
                       use
                       is confiscated
                       use
                       are still
                       brought
                       'factory'
                       may
                       but not
                       charges
                       case
                       charges
                       habit
                       case
                       seized
                       charges
                       problem
                       ring

                       sites
      tons of
                       is even
                       is even
                       is even
                       ring
                       lab
                       will
                       raids
                       peril
                       draws
                       'minimal'

                       use
                       killed
                       trade
                       use
                       users
                       ring
        about
         much
        using
         find
                       seized
                       abuse

These words were handwritten using a dip pen and fine 100 nib, dipped into white pigmented acrylic ink. The mirror is part of a shabbat candle set–I definitely did not take the mirror from Kanye’s house, as some colleagues have insinuated. Inspiration for the piece came of course from Rodrigo Derteano, but also in part from a conversation with the perennially influential Jon Wasserman. “1986,” and Derteano’s original piece, were projects created for the NYU ITP Data Art class led by Jer Thorp.