Mapping Dada by Riley Hoonan

How do we measure influence? If you allow that a link from one page to another allows us to measure relevance, ala the PageRankU+2122 algorithm, and that proximity (e.g. the number of links from one page to another) gives us a sense of how that relevance diminishes with distance, ‘influence’ is only a function of chronological order. This project is a case study in applying this methodology to the art movement, Dada, using the closed network of wikipedia to provide a consistent dataset. From this dataset (the scraped URLs and basic metadata of pages linking to and from Dada) a map of the conceptual framework, players and geography of Dada is established, contextualizing the art movement within it’s moment in history.