994,138
A real-time generative projection work turns wartime casualty statistics into a repeating field of lives, ageing, death, and remembrance.
994,138 is a real-time generative installation reflecting on the scale of UK military and civilian casualties during the First World War. Each pixel represents a single life. It begins black at birth, lightens as that life ages, then turns red in the year of death before the cycle begins again. Using average life expectancy in the UK at the time as part of its structure, the work compresses lives, historical time, and collective loss into a repeating visual field that remains simple in form but difficult to absorb in scale.
What gives the work its force is the tension between abstraction and human number. The image never illustrates individuals directly, yet each point of light stands for a person, and the repeated cycle turns data into an act of remembrance rather than a static statistic. That use of systems and reduction connects closely to May’s wider practice, where digital processes reshape how memory is held, visualised, and revisited.
Additional notes
- Commissioned as the centrepiece of the Artificial Light Festival in Bournemouth in 2010.
- Format: real-time generative installation running on a single computer with video projection output and recorded soundtrack.
- Size: variable and site-specific.
- Soundtrack by Martin A. Smith.
- Available for exhibition.