The Birdsong of Sorrow above Ukraine by Anastasia Balagurova

Each civilian life lost in the war in Ukraine, caused by Russia’s full-scale invasion that began on February 24, 2022, carries a story—of someone who should still be here. This project aims to reflect on the scale of these losses and acknowledge the irreplaceable live behind every number. No chart or graphic can fully capture the devastating impact of war, but this work strives to create a space for reflection and sorrow through artistic visualisation. The entire visualisation is programmatically generated.

This project is part of the Master's thesis "Visualising people in humanitarian crises: Where numbers meet empathy" at Aalto University, Finland. Through this work, the thesis explores ways to visualise humanitarian crises data while preserving its emotional gravity and addressing compassion fade—a phenomenon in which people's empathy decreases as the scale of the crisis grows.