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Animated Map Of Coalition Deaths Helps Site Visitors Visualize Casualties Of War
Graphic designer Tim Klimowicz created the map as a student project at New York's School of Visual Arts. The animation runs 10 frames a second, a frame for each day. A single black dot shows the location of a coalition military facility. Each dot starts as a white flash, and a larger red dot fades to black over the spam of 30 frames/days. A soft tick sound can be heard for each death. The volume increases with the relative number of fatalities that occurred simultaneously each day. More deaths in a smaller area produce visually deeper reds; and the sounds are more pronounced. Information about coalition deaths comes from the site www.icasualties.org; geographic information is referenced from GlobalSecurity.org. Originally, Klimowicz intended to display every war-related death, but he realized cataloging Iraqi military and civilian deaths would be difficult because of the sheer numbers, according to his Web site. Klimowicz set out to create a map that was objective and apolitical. But, as he worked on the project, he began questioning the concept of objectivity. He wrote on his Web site: "How objective can it really be when something as profound as a human death--which, in itself can have infinite interpretations--is represented with little more than a tiny black dot on a computer monitor?" Still, Klimowicz pledges to update the map as long as the war continues. « Software (In) Security | Main | Microsoft, Google Ruffle Some RSS Feathers » |
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