Videos
[Colors of Remembrance]
Computational Drawings: Custom software, CDC COVID Data, Projector
dimensions variable
2020-ongoing
This project is a virtual memorial.
In this series, I create drawings that act as memorials to those who have tragically lost their lives in the 2020- coronavirus pandemic. Digital drawings begin with the Pantone color of the year for Spring 2020, starting with the first death in the COVID pandemic. In the United States, that date was on February 29, 2020. I thought the project might be a 3-6 month project, but as time goes on, it seems unending.
Each drawing is one day in the epidemic. The date appears briefly on the lower right. The project can memorialize one community through time, a city, or a country’s death toll.
Each line represents a person. Each line in the entire project is given a completely unique color.
I take the formal language of minimalism and reintroduce narrative by seeing these daily drawings as visualizations, with each line representing a person lost to the pandemic. By creating drawings that act as both a visualization and a memorial to those lost to the coronavirus pandemic, I hope to engage us, to make a space for each person lost, with all their uniqueness.
Technical notes.
This project is written in javascript, with data pulled from publicly available data. The colors are set via HSV settings. The days cycle through Pantone colors, sorted by hue. Each year we go through the whole set of hues. The background hue is taken from 180 days from the current day color. The code takes the saturation value of the color of the line color, and juxtapose light and dark colors on the spectrum. If March 5th’s hue value is above 70% brightness, the background will be offset to 20-30% brightness, with the hue pulled at a 180 day offset.
We loop through hue values every year, but each line color is unique based on its saturation and value. The project has enough colors to distribute for a total of two years of colors to use in millions of colors mode.
Exhibitions
- “Hope is a thing with feathers,” solo exhibition at Nancy Littlejohn Fine Art, Houston TX 13 May -3 July 2022. Exhibition Catalog.
- Biennial of the Americas, COVID-19 Memorial Virtual Exhibition, 15 June – 18 July 2021.
- Telematic Media Arts. “The Archive to Come”, San Francisco, CA, USA. Curated by Carla Gannis and Clark Buckner, 22 October – 17 December 2020.