Digitdeath
Description:
This is a project to create a memorial web for the people who sadly died caused by COVID-19 in HK, the idea for them having a “home” to stay warm. Meanwhile is a lesson for reflection and being prepared for the future.
Here is a web cemetery for them to group and live here.
Link to my project: Digitdeath
Background
The 5th wave of the pandemic of COVID-19 in HK caused a huge number of deaths in HK. The public health system was overloaded, which caused them before dying, they need to live in an overclouded hospital. With a poor living environment, and never can arrange to meet with their relatives or families.
The whole process is very upsetting. Even we can feel their helplessness from the news pictures taken in the hospital at that time.
This work is helping to create a platform mentally having a “gathering venue”, creating their unique profile picture, live forever in this “home”. Reminding the people in the future, and letting us have a chance to worship them.
Technical
Getting the data, generate at least 10,000 profile pictures and arrange them into a grid.
The outcome is a web that contains 3 pages: Homepage, background info, and cemetery.
From the HKSAR government COVID-19 information website, every day posting the latest data about the COVID situation in HK into a CSV file. I download the latest one when I create this work, using the latest updated number of the death caused by COVID in HK.
For visualizing them into the cemetery setting, but they are already… Then we need to pay more effort to create their images. Like the ways recently people generate a huge amount of pixel art images for NFTs creation. By drawing several layers of pixel-art-style images, by a plugin created by codeSTACKr, posting on GitHub, help us to generate a huge amount of combinations of images of those layers for forming the images.
User-experience
There is no fantasy effect to attract people to visit. Is a heavy moody creation for people doing reflect on these issues. Furthermore, to include and raise awareness for these issues.
From the angle of the death number, that can be defined as a “disaster”, the damage may cause more serious than the normal disaster we know, like typhoons… We should pay attention to this, no matter when the end of COVID will be, we should take this as a reference. Be prepared for the next wave of COVID or any other public health issue.
The website without any complex or fantasy effect, more or less shows the information and the content directly is an effective way to document this moment.
The homepage with a simple description, then visitors can start by knowing more information by visiting the background information page, or directly visiting the cemetery to view the work.
Screenshots:
Video demo
#digital #death #digitdeath #generativeart #webart