Prismatic Audit

A collaborative statistical process involving thousands of tiny triangles and two calculators. Created by Jason Maling and Torie Nimmervoll in 2010 the project transformed shared spaces like shopping centres, offices and apartment buildings into sites of playful collective self-portraiture. After an intensive process of community dialogue, participants were issued a handmade Prismatic Signalling Device: a small box containing a miniature flagpole and ten coloured silk flags. Over a 12-day period, they changed their flags whenever they felt it was “appropriate,” signalling shifts in mood or perception.

A team of roaming auditors, coordinated by Maling and Nimmervoll, logged these changes every hour, speaking with participants and noting the colours. Each flag change became a coloured triangle in an accumulating strip of micro-data, which was then aggregated and visualised as a large-scale, evolving graphic installation in a central public location.

Twice daily, the community gathered for live briefings where auditors offered in depth analyses of colour shifts and staged a ceremonial “running of the flag” - the day’s dominant colour.

By reframing the familiar logic of an audit through play, The Prismatic Audit turned abstract data into meaningful social connection, building a temporary but vivid portrait of community life.

“Someone once described a Prismatic Audit as a mood-ring worn on the index finger of the soul that is pointing to a diagram of your brain. That diagram is large and very detailed with a lot of lines projecting towards a slightly out of focus region in the bottom right corner. Their job is to make that region clearer - to wipe away the grime, cut through the red tape and gently caress the delicate petals of meaning that lounge on the poolside of our lives.”