aaronareed.net

Developed during the ‘08 election, “It Is No Secret That” used Python and Google APIs to extract random sentences from blog posts made in the prior 60 minutes that mentioned the words “McCain” or “Obama.” An equal number were then presented side by side on the screen. The title comes from the start of one of these sentences.

The program was used to create a real-world art piece for the 2008 Burning Man festival. A random selection of over 400 sentences culled by the program were hand-written with a felt pen on a t-shirt that was worn throughout the week-long event, where it was intended that sweat and exposure to liquids would slowly make the writing more and more illegible until it became one solid mass of purple ink.

The title is one of several multi-word phrases that was found prefacing both “Obama” and “McCain.”