Unfinished Farewell Lub Luag Haujlwm Tseem Ceeb: Vev Xaib Nco Txog by Jiabao Li

Unfinished Farewell Lub Luag Haujlwm Tseem Ceeb: Vev Xaib Nco Txog by Jiabao Li is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2021 A' Design Award Nyiaj in Tsim Vev Xaib thiab Kev Tsim Vev Xaib Competition Category.

NyiajVev Xaib· 2021

Unfinished Farewell Lub Luag Haujlwm Tseem Ceeb: Vev Xaib Nco Txog

by Jiabao Li

Client: Jiabao Li

A' Design Award Nyiaj Winner in Vev Xaib Category

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The Design

About Unfinished Farewell Lub Luag Haujlwm Tseem Ceeb: Vev Xaib Nco Txog

Kev Sib Ncaim uas Tsis Tau Xaus yog ib lub vev xaib nco txog uas raug tsim los nco txog cov neeg uas tuag rau lub sijhawm kis mob COVID-19. Txhua tus neeg raug muab ib chav tsib cais uas cov qhua tuaj xyuas thiaj tau nkag mus. Nyob rau hauv txhua chav, cov qhua tuaj xyuas tuaj yeem nyeem tus neeg tuag zaj dabneeg thiab cov lus thov kev pab uas tau tshaj tawm ua ntej txoj kev tuag, thiab tseem tuaj yeem tso ib cov lus tseg. Cov lus uas pej xeem tso tseg yuav ntab nyob rau hauv qhov chaw. Cov duab plob thiab ploj mus thaum raug kov. Lub kaw lus particle raug tsim los ntawm three.js thiab cov ntawv ntab los ntawm p5.js. Cov ntaub ntawv raug sau los ntawm cov tsev neeg thiab los ntawm cov ncej pej xeem.

The Recognition

About the A' Design Award Nyiaj

Unfinished Farewell Lub Luag Haujlwm Tseem Ceeb: Vev Xaib Nco Txog yog tus yeej ntawm A' Design Award Nyiaj, ib qho kev lees paub muaj meej mom heev tshaj li qub uas muab rau cov qauv tsim qib siab, zoo nkauj thiab ua rau neeg xav tsis thoob. Cov neeg yeej Nyiaj yog cov haujlwm ci ntsa iab heev thiab tsim tshiab heev uas qhia txog kev paub, kev txawj ntse thiab kev ntse ntawm cov kws tsim qauv. Unfinished Farewell Lub Luag Haujlwm Tseem Ceeb: Vev Xaib Nco Txog xav tias yuav yog ib qho haujlwm zoo kawg nkaus uas tsim rau qhia, tshaj lij heev thiab tsim tshiab tob. Cov qauv tsim yeej A' Design Award Nyiaj no yog ib qho khoom tsim uas pom tseeb heev thiab neeg qhuas uas pab tau thiab nthuav dav ciam teb ntawm kev kos duab, kev tshawb fawb, kev tsim qauv thiab thev naus laus zis. Unfinished Farewell Lub Luag Haujlwm Tseem Ceeb: Vev Xaib Nco Txog yog ib qho khoom tsim uas neeg coob xav tau, uas ua rau xav, coj kev xav zoo thiab ua rau xav tsis thoob thiab xav paub.

Behind the Design

Press Kit

Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.

Unique Properties: Unfinished Farewell is an online space to commemorate the people who have left us because of the COVID-19 pandemic. When visitors enter each person's "tomb", they can see their stories and the help-seeking information they posted before they passed away, and leave a message.

There are various ways of visualizing the statistics of COVID, but none about individual’s story. This project provides one way for us to visualize and relate to death. Behind every number is a life.
Dimensions & Packaging: Screen resolution
Tags: COVID-19, commemorate, platform, pandemic, digital tomb
Production Technology: The particle system is written with three.js. The floating message inside each chamber is written with p5.js. We manually collected all the information of the deceased by contacting their families and from Weibo, to have a better understanding of each individual’s story.
Design Challenge: Website design: How to design the space to have a comparable feeling of visiting the physical tomb during a time that everybody has to stay at home. How to convey sorrow, grief, solemn, melancholy, mourning, and agony through a website interface and interactions.
Data collection: We collected the data through both algorithms and manually. We reached out to each person's family to gather information and their portraits. It was a very sad and tough communication process.
Surveillance: This project has been constantly surveilled by cyber police in China because any artworks related to the pandemic are considered "sensitive" topics. We set the server in the US to avoid being taken down by the "internet wall" in China. Our volunteers were harassed by police several times during the creation of this project.
Research: As COVID-19 spreads across the globe and the number of deaths continues to rise, the heartbreaking experiences are being replaced by collective mourning. As German journalist and pacifist Kurt Tukholsky said: "The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic".
When we look back at the help-seeking posts of those lost, those who waited to die because of unconfirmed testing; those whose death certificates were being tampered with; those who committed suicide out of despair; those non-COVID patients whose life-saving medical treatment was foregone… None of them were included in the death toll, and are likely to be forgotten over time. They didn’t have a fair medical treatment during their lifetime, and they were not mentioned after their death. The same is true for many frontline workers who lost their lives due to infection or overwork.
While connecting with families of those lost, one daughter asked: “After this pandemic, who can remember the pain of someone like my mother who had nowhere to seek medical treatment, was refused by the hospital, and died at home?" This is one of the reasons why we built this online platform, trying to document as many people who have left us because of the pandemic as possible. The website also includes the help-seeking information they posted before they passed away, which is the evidence they left to this era. We hope to provide a space for family members to release their grief and for the public to mourn.
Behind every number is a life.
Inspiration: We designed the website this way so that when visitors enter this space, they can sense that sort of atmosphere: sorrow, grief, solemn, melancholy, mourning, agony. A comparable feeling that visitors can have as if they are physically visiting their tomb. This gives us much more understanding of death than the increasing statistics.
Project Duration: Duration varies, online
Operation Flow: Here we try to gather the portrait for each deceased. You’ve never met this person, but their portrait is right in front of you, but then you realized that they’ve passed away. As soon as your finger lingers on the person’s face, it scatters and vanishes. You haven’t have a chance to really get to know this person, they just fade away. I designed the website this way so that when visitors enter this space, they can sense that sort of atmosphere: sorrow, grief, solemn, melancholy, mourning, agony. A comparable feeling that visitors can have as if they are physically visiting their tomb. This gives us much more understanding of death than the increasing statistics.

Enter each individual’s space by clicking “Farewell”. You can see the help-seeking information they posted before they passed away. You can leave a message. All the messages people sent here will float in the space. Here are some messages we’ve received since publishing:

“Do I need to shout loudly to be noticed?”,
"The best memory of the deceased is not to lose memory in your lifetime”,
"RIP, I hope you can change your job if you become policeman again.”, (This is a message to a cyber police who passed away out of overwork for deleting sensitive messages on the internet. )
“Can’t understand, don’t understand”, (to the whistleblower Doctor Li Wenliang)
"Because of your existence, I will always learn to love humankind.”,
"I hope I can at least know your name, not just the unknown name, may you rest in peace”,
“Yancheng, after you leave, your dad and brother still push your wheelchair to eat together with you”,
"No freedom to speak, no freedom to die”.

Someone uploaded her grandmother's information who passed away to our website, and wrote how much she misses her: “Thank you, grandma, and thank you for seeing me as more than your life. Grandma, you must take care of yourself. Please rest assured and I will take care of this home. Grandma, I really miss you, Grandma, I love you.”

This project has been exhibited in OCAT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shenzhen, 2020, “Let This Moment Be Transformative“, and Uncertainties: PRD Post-pandemic Contemporary Art Exhibition, Macao, 2020. South China Morning Post’s Inside China Tech podcast interviewed me about this project on the topic "How technology has changed the way we die and mourn”.
Team Members: Concept & Direction: Jiabao Li, Laobai Wu
Design: Jiabao Li
Development: Sheng Wang, Wenying Wu, Min Zhu, Amo
Sound: Lu Wang (dk)
Image Credits: Jiabao Li