vamping on your final paragraph concerning the ‘ecstasy of communication’ in comparison | contrast to Werner Herzog’s ‘ecstasy of truth’ … well, interestingly enough, the ecstasy expressed in the installation, especially when so de-contextualized, re-contextualized, might be more the ‘ecstasy of data’

this is the information age

informaiton = data

our society places an extreme amount of value on data ( data and money and breasts, oh my! … or at least these 3 things seem to get the most attention lately ) and this valuation of information oftentimes confounds the notion of data and truth … i’m certain that somewhere in the data we can find the truth … but the data alone, without interpretation, means nothing … slice and dice, mix and match, concatenate, do what you will with the data, but data in a vacuum does not the truth make

data from one source is dangerous

data from one source as subject to interpretation can cause many years of hardship, grief and pain … it can take 8 years of ‘fool me once’ and create several lifetimes of horror and hurt … it can take away life and limbs and innocence … data from Dick is not to be trusted

but back to Metropath(ologies) … maybe Judith and the Socialable Media Group were intentionally focusing on the ‘pathology’ part of clever title …

interestingly enough … the definition of metropathy as defined on the medilexicon goes a little something like this …

metropathy
Type: Term
1. Any disease of the uterus, especially of the myometrium

following a link from this definition then leads us to …

metropathia hemorrhagica
Type: Term
Definitions:
1. abnormal, excessive, often continuous uterine bleeding due to persistence and exaggeration of the follicular phase of the menstrual cycle; the endometrium is the seat of glandular hyperplasia with cyst formation.

now, i do NOT believe the uterine context of the definition or even the excessive menstrual issues mentioned in the above follow-up were intentionally part of the core meaning of Metropath(ologies), but i firmly believe that a nice and rather genius Freudian subconscious social statement came out through the artists collectively working on the piece … you describe this glut of information floating around the room, around the miniature cityscape that the user walks through … and perhaps the intent is NOT to glorify datarifficness, but instead is meant to comment on our obsession with non-stop, continuous information streams … tweets, status feeds, tv news tickers … these datableedings, as disturbing as the metaphor may seem, need to resolve to something less extreme for better health of our societal and informational system-organism

just some thoughts …

i definitely need to get out and see this piece … thanks for posting ;]