Counting the Dead: Arizona and the Forgotten Pandemic

Counting the Dead: Arizona and the Forgotten Pandemic

A new multimedia installation at ASU Library is calling attention to the 100-year anniversary of the “forgotten pandemic,” a worldwide influenza which killed more people between 1918-1920 than were collectively killed in World War I, World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam. 

A unique, self-guided tour of experiential data, "Counting the Dead" aims to re-embody Arizona’s influenza mortality data from one century ago, illustrating the ways in which illness had spread across our then young state.

Developed by ASU scholars Elizabeth Grumbach and Jacqueline Wernimont, the exhibit highlights innovative methods to represent data sets in three dimensional space, including sonification and haptics, offering visitors alternative ways of understanding — through feeling and hearing — the unfolding of influenza in time and space.

Grumbach is the project manager of the Nexus Lab, a digital research co-op within ASU’s Institute for Humanites Research, and Wernimont is an assistant professor in the Department of English and the director of the Nexus Lab.

Comfort and wellness food will be served from 2 to 4 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 17, in Hayden Library, along with other offered wellness resources, in celebration of the exhibition launch.

Patty Odle
ASU Library
patricia.odle@asu.edu
http://lib.asu.edu
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Hayden Library, room C2