During this last round of our recent election cycle here in Cascadia, an interesting new Tumblr blog popped up, followed by a flood of dozens of images that quickly spread through Facebook and Twitter.
The images, part of a new interactive art project called ‘Vote Cascadia’ were a response to the release of a simple template that could be downloaded online and allowed people to fill out their hopes and desires for a Cascadia Commonwealth before anonymously reposting them.
“The project works to help people engage their neighbors and communities in re-imagining city, state and place - by asking each person to anonymously share their vision of a perfect world. By comparing and contrasting our different visions, we begin to understand more intimately the needs, hopes, and desires of those around us, and find our common ground.”
The “Results” of this poll are dynamic word cloud art images. All the ballots are analyzed for word frequency, and the most common words are larger proportional to their usage. In this way, they sum up in a single image the recurring thoughts, dreams, and ideas of an entire community- our collective common ground.
Ballots that have been submitted so far can be viewed on http://votecascadia.tumblr.com/ . In addition, anyone looking to get involved or help expand the project into their own neighborhood is encouraged to email: notsamsmith@gmail.com