Every death, especially suicide is a tragedy that has long-lasting effects on the people left behind.
Often it is impossible for families and friends to share their grief. Instead suicide is expected to be hidden and not talked about. This behavior applies especially in Japan.
Telling someone about it though could help with the grieving process and might also prevent other suicides. Death is an important topic to think about and to discuss – since you, just like me, might be one of the bereaved.

Data visualization in an artistic manner is an effective way of storytelling, when there is social stigma attached to the topic and when ambivalent feelings need to be expressed.

The installation executes an application which extracts the numbers of death by suicide and psychosis from worldwide mortality statistics collected by the World Health
Organization (WHO) and visualizes them on a polar coordinate system.
The numbers are geographically unbiased. The number of deaths by suicide is equally high in both “developed” countries and “developing” countries.
This work abstracts world suicides as particles and a sphere in wireframe on a screen, the occurrence details are displayed in a timeline interface reminiscent of the familiar news stream.

All images by Ayumu Nagamatsu