“Everyone Ever in the World” is a limited-run art poster that offers a visual representation of the number of people lived versus killed in wars, massacres, and genocide during the entire recorded history of humanity. Maybe their explanation will help:
“Everyone Ever in the World” is a visual representation of the number of people to have lived versus been killed in wars, massacres and genocide during the recorded history of humankind. The visualisation uses existing paper area and paper loss (die cut circle) to represent the concepts of life and death respectively. The total number of people to have lived was estimated through exponential regression calculations based on historical census data and known biological birth rates. This results in approximately 77.6 billion human beings to have ever lived during the recorded history of humankind. The total people killed in conflicts was collated from a number of historical source books and was summed for all conflicts – approximately 969 million people killed, or ~1.25% of all the people to have ever lived. The timescale encompasses 3200 BCE to 2009 CE – a period of over 5 millennia, and 1100+ conflicts of recorded human history.
No? Me neither, as this chart seems soundly in ‘art’ rather than ‘science’. Sure there’s some math in the figures, but the representation leaves me wondering what they’re trying to convey. Some things to help:
- The circular text lists wars.. The center is 2008, outer edges are BC.
- No idea why some of the lines stop
- There’s no relationship between the text & number of deaths (that I can see).
- The dots at the top supposedly represent the increase in the number of conflicts, one dot for each millenia.
So.. What do you think about it?
Yes, exactly. There is always a difficulty in interpreting visualizations of this sort that are meant to be viewed in person – the poster is quite large so the details that are nearly invisible online are easily read in context. The other issue is that the imagery I produced included vector jpg outputs where the graphic details are shown in white. In reality, all the graphics are printed in clear gloss ink while the centre circle (shown also in white above) is physically cut out of the poster. So, it easy to confuse the elements in the jpg when no confusion exists in the real context. Printing in clear ink allows for a visual assessment of die cut area in reference to paper area – directing the viewer to make this comparison first (actual poster: http://www.aisleone.net/2010/design/everyone-ever-in-the-world/ ). This is a purposeful engineering of hierarchy. The conflict count dots and text is secondary, and so is printed in clear ink – which is easily read in person, but extremely difficult to photograph!
Hope this helps. P.
@Peter Crnokrak Ah.. So the poster itself represents “everyone”, and the circles are percentage-scaled to the number of people dying in each millenia?
That does make a little bit more sense.
Perhaps this will clarify your confusion:
–total paper area = 650mm X 920mm (represents the 77.6 billion people to have ever lived.
–die cut circle (the centre white circle) represents the 969 million people that have died in wars, massacres and genocide.
–area of the die cut = 969 million/77.6 billion = 1.25% of the paper area (650mm X 920mm X 0.0125). All this information is shown on the poster.
-text lists all recorded conflicts – it’s just a list, but grouped by millenia – allowing for a visual representation of counts. Lines stop as the earlier millenia have fewer recorded conflicts.
The printed dots (across the top and bottom) represent counts of conflicts – essentially showing the increase in conflict frequency over the millennia – is this an issue of historical record fidelity or a true increase in conflict frequency? Open to debate. Conflict frequency and proportion dead represent two different types of information – are there periods in history when conflicts are numerous, but result in relatively low death counts – yes, first decade of 21st century.
The historical record becomes less and less reliable as one goes back in time. It’s difficult to say though if there is any real qualitative difference between the 18th, 19th, and first half of the 20th centuries – before mass communication was common. When comparing conflict counts (and proportion dead) for these centuries alone, one sees similar rates of increase.