A death, a dot, a datapoint by

A death, a dot, a datapoint is a data story that visualises and revisualises Australian cancer mortality statistics, exploring how our collective loss is quantified, cleaned, and structured, with our loved ones anonymised into a handful of attributes, then aggregated into totals and proportions, redrawn as lines and bars. This transformation creates distance that allows a different view to emerge. This helps us to see patterns and trends, but the individuals represented within shift out of focus.

The piece explores the emotional dimensions of data aggregation and disaggregation, culminating in a digital installation of my work 15 years of grief, a 5 metre long scarf that encodes my memories of grieving my father in stitches and yarn. This crochet data physicalisation is a deeply personal representation of fifteen years of emotion, mined from my memories and experiences. The crux of A Death, a dot, a datapoint is the connection between this dataset and the Australian Cancer Mortality Statistics dataset — joined by a single datapoint, the death of my father.

The data story situates this deeply personal expression within the context of 695,000 other Australian lives lost to cancer since my father died, all recorded in our national mortality database as a single datapoint with a handful of anonymised attributes. This quantification and abstraction is a necessary process in the function of our society, with decisions made and resources allocated based on aggregation and analysis. But the tiny pieces of information we collect are deceptive, representing an enormity that we cannot record. Those 695,000 people left behind an exponential number of bereaved people with immeasurable griefs. We cannot distil this into a simple number, it cannot be made visible in a single view, and yet it is an intrinsic part of this story and should not be left unseen.

Looking at data is something like a magic eye trick. Sometimes, it’s important to shift your focus, even if just for a moment.