Haunting Data Visualizations Display The Aftermath Of 9/11

Thirteen years later, we still remember where and when. We know exactly what, despite detached, distorted discourse over exactly how. We're still coming to terms with the fact that we'll never fully understand why; the events of September 11, 2001, and the global turmoil that followed, restructured the world we live in. For these reasons, for better or worse, we've lived imprinted with the images since.

What scars do we still bear as a species? What wounds still weep forth from the collective psyche? How do we reconcile reality and achieve closure in a world ever-determined to defeat both? The answers lie in the ways we remember the events surrounding the singularly supranatural, collectively traumatic event:

May 21, 2014 marks the opening of the National September 11 Memorial Museum, a project thirteen years in the making. Featuring images of architecture and artifacts from the original incident, the pavillion presents a freeze-frame of a former fracture, a time capsule at once frightening and fitting for our fragile world. Timescape, one algorithm-created for the space by media design firm Local Projects, provides visitors a projected visualization of the attacks and their aftermath:

The 34-foot long feature displays a fractalizing timeline of global stories and headlines in the wake of that fateful morning. Said Local Projects principal Jake Barton to Fast Co.Design, "The challenge is to make things graspable and to tell an engaging, meaningful story.

"We wanted to focus the design on something that wouldn’t render it overly simply, but would tell the story of both the data and how we were deriving the individual timelines."

The result is at once as memorable as it is agent, a dark derivative that demarcates the happenings of the time period since.

"We knew from the beginning, when we started the project eight years ago, that 9/11 wasn’t quite current events but definitely wasn’t history. The eventual outcome of the story was undefined," Barton continues. "We started thinking, how do we tell that story? How do we accommodate the types of changes and evolutions we know will happen?" The shapeshifting web of Timescape allows us to contextualize the cataclysm. Perhaps, seen cohesively as a series of calculations, we can collectively attempt some form of closure.

The National September 11 Memorial Museum opens to the public May 21, 2014. h/t Co. Design

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