Golden State Warriors 24-Game Winning Streak Drawings, 2018

Crooked Data: (Mis) Information in Contemporary Art, Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art, University of Richmond, Richmond, VA

In 2015, the Golden State Warriors basketball team started the season by winning 24 straight games to accomplish the 2nd longest winning streak in NBA history. This winning streak resonated significantly with me as a Bay Area native. In an effort to memorialize this event and revisit each game, I created a series of drawings titled The Warriors 24 Game Winning Streak (2015).

My system-based drawings are influenced by John Cage’s creative use of the I Ching, an ancient Chinese oracle that yields random numbers from 1-64, to compose with indeterminate outcomes. To explore this concept, I chose a series of 24 NBA games to generate data. My process was less purely random than the I Ching, generating data based on prior knowledge of game factors like players’ tendencies and game structure along with the frequency and probability of those factors. The drawings’ systems work within a structure of 4 rectangles each with a grid of 12 rectangles to represent the 4 quarters of the game and 12 minutes in each quarter of the game. I established a set of rules based on color, pencil, ink, ink wash, mark, and gesture correlating to each event in each minute: 3-pointers, slam-dunks, fouls, blocked shots, time outs, missed free throws, turnovers, and more. I then revisited each game by way of online game logs that record the play-by-play of each game as well as the time stamp of when they occurred. From these transcriptions, I translated the games into cartographic visual records on paper that created a new language of abstraction that was both hyper-specific and cryptic. Included in the series are the 25th game that ended the streak (colorless) and system notes.

Interview with curator of the exhibition: https://www.crookeddata.com/lee-walton