Liar Liar

 "Liar Liar",  Large wool pants, hand embroidered, extra long red tie, custom measuring tape to read the chart data.  Created for CUNY Graduate Center Data Visualization class, December 2019. 

The current occupant of the White House lies.  All. The. Time.  This is so far beyond 'politics as usual.'  When he was inaugurated in January 2017, the Washington Post started tracking his lies in their Fact Checker Database and as of October 2019 he has lied over 13,000 times.  In comparison Obama factually lied 18 times in 8 years.   I'm not talking about exaggerations.  These are factual lies.  Trump lies more in a single day than Obama lied in 8 years.  Here is the link, read for yourself: 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/

I'm in a class this semester titled Fundamentals of Data Visualization ( for a Master's degree)  and most of the work is done using a tool called Tableau.  But I'm a textile artist, so I have to do it this way. 

First I collected the data off the 
Washington Post site.  Although I asked for a downloadable file, I was not able to get that, so I manually recorded monthly data (32 months) in the various categories recorded at WaPo. 

Next I entered this data into Excel, then combined the categories into 4 - because I learned in my class that less is more.  



I worked with the data in Tableau, creating a stacked bar chart and I wanted it to look like flames.  Although I knew I needed Yellow, Orange and Red colors, I had to refer to a piece of flame clip art to get the colors right: 

Then I had to create a scale to transfer the stacked bar chart into centimeters of embroidery stitches.   I tooked the highest and the lowest data lines (October 2018 and February 2017) to make sure they would fit on the pants and look reasonable.   My scale is 15 lies per centimeter.  I used formulas in Excel to create my pattern: 

I found these pants at a local Salvation Army Thrift Shop, looking for pin-striped men's suit pants in as large a size as possible.  The pin stripes helped keep my data lined up and also gave it that old-timey businessman look.  I started embroidering on a Saturday evening, and this project was due in class 12 days later.  

Floss colors to get this to look like flames:

Marking the data lines using tailor's chalk and centimeters on a ruler:   

Chain Stitching in the 4 colors.  The wavy lines are random as I wanted to keep on the right side of the pin stripe at the top and bottom of the line.    

Adding the month abbreviations to the hem.  (oops- what happened to MAR?)  There was lots of unstitching going on. 

Here is the legend, where you can see how all the categories from WaPo are grouped and translated into the 4 colors I stitched.    (Note:  My data goes from Feb 2017 to October 2019 - the Washington Post continues to update this database, so it is possible there are more categories now.) 

 I stitched the title of the piece on the waist band, and this hangs using 2 hangers, drawing attention to the waist size.   I also made the extra long red tie, which if I get a chance to hang this again and photograph it, should be sort of waving off to one side, rather than hanging down between the pant legs   (OR, if I can make that tie again i would make it twice as long, so it puddles on the floor) 

This tie is in response to class feedback where one classmate wasn't sure who 'he' is.  So following the lead of so many editorial cartoonists, I use the super long red tie as shorthand to indicate that this is Trump, like this: 

In Tableau, the graphing software, outlier data can be annotated with a call out text box.  Since so many people wanted to know what happened in October 2018 to generate so many lies, I created this 'price tag' shaped text box, that connects via a string and is stored in the pocket. 

"Midterm Elections - 1189 lies" 

That's nearly 40 factual lies each day in the month of October, 2018.

No wonder we are fatigued.

The final element created with this piece is the lies measuring tape.  I considered including a regular tape measure with the pants, but my scale is 15 lies per centimenter, which is hard for the audience to interact with.  (How many lies is 13 centimeters??)   

So instead I created a scale in excel, which I carefully sized so that the 30 lie tickmark would be at the 2cm mark on a ruler. 

I printed this in sections using inkjet printer fabric, then constructed a 1500 lies long tape measure: 

Visitors to the piece are encouraged to measure any line they wish to discover how many lies in that category he made in that month. 

Also, in proper data viz scholarship fashion, the tape measure includes my data source, the Washington Post web site. 

We are all tired of the lies and the shame this liar has brought to our institutions and reputation around the world.  At the time of this posting the Democrats are impeaching this President, however its clear the GOP in the Senate will acquit him.  Shameful.   We will have to vote him out in November 2020.  Vote them all out.  All those senators who normalized this level of dishonesty.  I can remember disagreeing about policy with voters who supported the other side of the aisle.  But I can't remember a time that felt like this - where one side lies so blatantly, and its casually accepted.     

Liar Liar Pants on Fire ! 

We won't forget.