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Josh Begley (born 1984) is an American digital artist known for his data visualizations. He is the creator of Metadata+, an iPhone app that tracked every reported United States drone strike.[1] Begley is the director of two short films, Best of Luck with the Wall (2016) and Concussion Protocol (2018), both produced by Academy Award-winning director Laura Poitras.[2] He is based in Brooklyn, New York.[citation needed]
Josh Begley | |
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 | |
| Born | 1984 (age 39–40) San Francisco, California |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley, NYU's Tisch School of the Arts |
| Known for | Digital Art, Data Visualization |
| Website | joshbegley |
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Begley was born in San Francisco, California in 1984.[3] He is a graduate of University of California, Berkeley[4] and the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.[5][6]
In July 2012, Begley developed an iPhone application that would send a push notification every time there was a US drone strike in Pakistan, Yemen, or Somalia. Apple rejected the app three times in the months following its release,[7] calling its content "crude and objectionable".[8] Begley then created Dronestream, a Twitter account chronicling every reported US drone strike,[9] for Douglas Rushkoff's Narrative Lab. It gained 15,000 followers in the first week.[10][11]
In June 2012, Begley and two other New York University graduate students, Mehan Jayasuriya and James Borda, received a cease and desist letter from Invisible Children for their Kony 2012 parody website, Kickstriker.[12][13]
In 2014, after five rejections, Apple accepted Begley's iPhone app.[14] It was then approved as Metadata+, before once again being removed by Apple, bringing the total number of rejections to 12.[15][16] He works at The Intercept with journalists Jeremy Scahill, Glenn Greenwald, and Laura Poitras.[17]
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Begley is the director of Best of Luck with the Wall (2016), a documentary short about the geography of the U.S.-Mexico border.[18] It was made with 200,000 satellite images downloaded from Google Maps.[19] It received Honorary Mention at 2017 Prix Ars Electronica and was nominated for an ICP Infinity Award.[20]
In 2018, Begley released his second short film, Concussion Protocol (2018), produced by Academy Award-winning director Laura Poitras. The New Yorker called it "a chasteningly gorgeous accounting of each concussion reported during the current N.F.L. season."[21]
He co-taught a class at Columbia Law School in Fall of 2018.[22]
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- "Dronestream", (December 2012) a Twitter account posting every reported United States drone strike.[5]
- "Officer Involved", (June 2015) a photographic project on police violence, with an introduction by the novelist Teju Cole.[23]
- "Prison Map", (2012) a site using aerial photography to provide a visual representation of the US prison system.[6][24][25]
- "Redlining", (2012) an online archive of redlining maps overlaid on California cities.[26][27]
- "Kickstriker", (2012) a parody site Begley built with classmates Mehan Jayasuriya and James Borda, purporting to crowdfund military interventions in global conflicts.[28]
- "The Listserve", part of a NYU class project built by Begley with Greg Dorsainville, Yoonjo Choi, Alvin Chang and Zena Koo.[29] A listserv-like email list where one randomly selected list member per day can send an email to the entire list.[29]
- "Subject of the Dream", a collage of excerpts from the work of Toni Morrison.
- "Racebox", (2010) a website showing the race section of the United States Census through history, from 1790 to 2010.[30] This project explores historical racial identities in the United States and the relationship between government and race.[19]
- "Empire.is", an interactive map showing the location of known United States military installations around the world.[31]
- "Profiling.is", a visual representation of the Associated Press's probe into the New York Police Department's post-9/11 Muslim surveillance program.
- "Archives + Absences", an iPhone app that notifies users every time the police end someone's life in the United States.[32]
- "The News is Breaking," a visualization of every New York Times front page since 1852.[33]
- "Best of Luck with the Wall," (2016) produced by Laura Poitras, a short film about the geography of the U.S.-Mexico Border.[30]
- "Concussion Protocol," (2018) produced by Laura Poitras, a visual record of every concussion reported during the 2017-2018 NFL season.[34]
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