Minneapolis artist brings faces of the fallen to city streets
Friday, May 28, 2010 at 2:43 pm
- 3 Comments
We’re at war — on two fronts — yet visible public awareness of the fact seems increasingly scarce. Thankfully, artists are among those trying to invade this apparent obliviousness with interventions, from Suzanne Opton’s billboards of those who fight on our behalf to Steve McQueen’s quest to commemorate killed-in-action soldiers on British postage stamps. This Memorial Day, the faces of the fallen will hit closer to home for Minnesotans. Through his residency with Minneapolis Art on Wheels, artist Aaron Marx has been projecting images of U.S. soldiers killed in the line of duty on facades of buildings in downtown Minneapolis. The images will next be projected on the Basilica of St. Mary in downtown Minneapolis the evening of May 31, Memorial Day.
Marx is traveling, so couldn’t explain the project in detail, but he did offer this description via email:
The images of the faces are scraped from the Washington Posts “Faces of the Fallen” and processed for long distance projection. The faces are paired with animations from a 3d model of the earth where the birth place and death place was mapped and connected with an arc that corresponds to the age of the soldier at death. Yes, I have names, ages, dates of birth, dates of death, location of birth (or hometown), and nature of death for most of the 5,400+ soldiers.
Marx says he was unable to map all the data during his three-week MAW residency for this iteration of the project, but he’s continuing that process. View more images from his “Mass Information and the Temporal Graffiti of War” series:
Marx's project in downtown Minneapolis
The Basilica of St. Mary as backdrop for Marx's project
3 Comments
Comment posted May 28, 2010 @ 5:46 pm
This is one of the best ideas I have ever personally seen. Being that I know people and family members that have served in Iraq and Afgan. Very admirable. Thank you for this article. More importantly though is to thank a veteran for his/her service.
Semper Fi
Comment posted June 23, 2010 @ 7:09 am
Reminds me of a project in Charlestown, MA, the scene of urban violence and also of the Battle of Bunker Hill. The faces of those killed (as I recall) were projected onto the Bunker Hill monument. One of the reasons the neighborhood suffered so much crime was due to the “code of silence” in which no one “ratted out” the killers to the police.
Here we have another breaking of the code of silence, but in this case it is the silence of ignorance as to why we are still, after about nine years, in a region where the Russians also bankrupted themselves among people who despised them.
Our finest young people are dying in this money pit, and the rationale is just as confident from Washington as the domino theory was in Vietnam. This time the thugs are in suits.
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