Cathryn Ploehn, Kelsey Campbell—Outlier 2021—Visualizing Transgender Day of Remembrance

Visualizing Transgender Day of Remembrance: lessons in bearing witness through making losses visible and visceral Often taking the form of crisp line charts, data visualizations are prominent tools helping us make sense of immense death in this time of global pandemic. Yet, a sense of humanity is often lost in a deluge of visualizations employing neat categories and disembodied, geometric representations of the dead—evoking a sense analysis and numbness in a moment of loss that also deserves weight and grief. We interrogate these critiques of data visualizations in our project to visualize data of lives lost due to anti-trans hate. Our work aims to emphasize visibility and awareness around anti-trans violence and to cultivate a sense of solidarity and legitimacy of transgender identities. In this work aiming to make these losses seen—and felt—we point towards how one might construct a data visualization that lets us live in good relationship to the dead represented as data: to bear witness to the gravity of that loss, and reinstate value in lives taken. Even further, we explore how data-driven, interactive storytelling may help us hold the weight of grief of the deaths made visible and visceral. Our talk aims to empower any bearer of sensitive data to think critically about how to design data visualizations that invite us to form meaningful relationships and conversations about the humanity within.