I was honored to be selected as one of nine works to be presented at Prime Produce, a multidisciplinary gallery space in Manhattan, to present an installation and performance in Hidden in Plain Sight, an exhibit highlighting unseen statistics. Our opening had over 500 guests bustling in this space and our closing consisted of a panel of artists and a live performance improvisation with my graphical panel system. This work highlights missing persons in NYC with various forms of dementia.
The Work:
Disappearing Data
Tara Lee Burns
The NYCEM Emergency Notifications dataset lists 863 reports of missing persons with dementia and/or Alzheimer’s Disease. 101 people with dementia and/or Alzheimer’s were reported missing in NYC in 2022. Each projected panel highlights a fragmented artifact—a location, faded photograph, or description—of one of 41 missing people with dementia and/or Alzheimer’s in the NYCEM Emergency Notification dataset between August 2 and December 25, 2022.
Having familial ties to someone with Alzheimer’s, I’ve witnessed firsthand the fading of a loved one with the disease. Pulling from the data, this work aims to visualize a small portion of the loss experienced by someone with this disease and the loss faced by their loved ones. These people are in all senses of the word ‘missing’—the continual repetition of the fading of their memories, abilities, and independence.
Participants are asked to enter a trackable area in front of the projection that will fade the panels in and out depending on the audience’s coordinates in space. The continual dimming of the panels affected by passersby represents the ephemerality of the mind of a dementia patient, the disappearance of the knowledge of their location, self, and the people around them. These missing people were entered into this dataset, but they never leave. There is no information on their found state, they are forever missing and their fate is the same—continually deteriorating—disappearing data.
This work is dedicated to Kirk, Livi, Charles, and Alexandra.