Datum mortifera

what is it

Grown from Belgian death counts, week by week. The rawest subject in the project: every growth point is a week in which people died. The spring of 2020 stands in the form like a wound.

how is it made

The weekly mortality level drives step length and thickness, the week-over-week change drives the growth angle, the excess-mortality ratio sets the colour from cool to hot. Excess mortality above a rolling baseline counts as a shock.

what to look for

• The COVID apex. spring 2020, the heaviest shock, the breaking point of the whole form.
• Clustered scars. the excess-mortality weeks bunch together, so the kinks and halos arrive in waves.

the honest part

A real compromise sits in the form. Mortality gives mainly one meaningful number, so both step length and thickness lean on it: one variable doing the work of two. The creature owns that. It is thinner in meaning than its dense silhouette suggests, and it does not pretend otherwise.