Process

Louie Adamian and Christopher Kitchen
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Gerrymandering tinder is an art installation that informs people about gerrymandering through a parody of the popular dating app "Tinder".

Gerrymandering Tinder is an art installation made to inform young voters about the strange and possibly disenfranchising process of gerrymandering. The project plays on how deformed gerrymandered districts are by putting them in Tinder. Where judging merit by appearance exclusively is not only commonplace but expected. Tinder was chosen not only due to this parallel but also to attract the projects target audience (youth). People within a few years of the minimum voting age are most likely to be affected by gerrymandering without knowing what it is, and most likely to recognize Tinder. The project has users "like" districts if they think it has been gerrymandered, and "disliking" if they think it isn't. If they correctly guess that a district has been gerrymandered, they will "match" with that district and be able to send and receive messages with that district. The chat functionality is where the user will learn about the district. To accommodate the possibility of multiple people interacting with the installation, the project doesn't let the user interact with the program directly, but rather use a set of buttons to vote what action will be taken next. Once voting begins, a timer starts counting down. Once this timer gets to 0, the program will execute whichever function has the most votes. Overall, this installation is not designed to fully inform someone about gerrymandering but rather to quickly inform them of its existence through an entertaining medium, and encourage users to do further research on their own.