If you see a densely packed array of names on a public building or structure, there are essentially two possibilities: one is a list of donors, and the other is the departed.
Close to the 9/11 Memorial, the elegant and delicate Optima font on the metal railings surrounding the large square twin waterfall pools is one of the fonts favored by the memorial. On the bronze panels, the location markers and subgroup headings are in raised letters, while all the names below are hollow.
In the daytime, each slender stroke is like a sheer abyss, swallowing the sunlight or tears that fall from the sky, occasionally rising with a fresh flower, a flag, or a line of candles. I've also seen people cover names with paper and repeatedly print the names of the departed with red ink.
At night, the built-in lighting turns each name into a burning flame.
images © 9/11 Memorial&Museum
Amidst the waterfalls and the continuous sound of rain, names of strangers also slowly drift away like horizontal rivers, their quiet sorrow transformed into an endless, day-and-night cycle. I didn't realize I had circled around until a certain name appeared again before my eyes: ...with her unborn child.
This name became an anchor for me, a spectator with limited empathy.
Looking around, I thought about the most practical and significant issue faced by the "Reflecting Absence" project once it was determined: how should these 2,983 names be arranged? The unique nature of the 9/11 event made it impossible to arrange the names by the time of death as done with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and arranging them alphabetically would inevitably lead to visual fatigue due to repetitions and similarities - especially when there are two people with the same name, Michael Francis Lynch, one can imagine the confusion if they appeared side by side. Arranging them by floors or seat numbers on the planes? While this could address some needs, it couldn't cover all of them.
Ultimately, a consensus was reached that the memorial should convey a feeling that the distribution of names seems random, reflecting the chaos and arbitrariness of the event itself. As one of the designers, Daniel S. said: "The people who died that day were no different from the rest of us... they are us, and we are them." But there is still some underlying logic - people desperately want to grasp this point of comfort: who was with their loved ones in their final moments?
In addition to known facts, such as the positions of the victims in the buildings, the locations mentioned in their last phone calls, the formations of the rescue teams, etc., the Memorial Foundation also sought "meaningful adjacency relationships" from the families of the victims - that is, the names they wanted to be placed together - and received more than 1,200 requests. Each pair triggered a chain reaction, along with aesthetic considerations such as the number of letters in the names and the distribution of the seams and corners of the metal panels. This extremely complex algorithm and spatial layout problem were ultimately resolved in collaboration between the media design company Local Projects and data artist Jer Thorp.
To what depth can a design extend? From invisible networks of meaning to color codes on computer screens, from inscriptions on bronze plates to the raindrops continuously falling on them at this moment, instantaneity and eternity, randomness and destiny, heaven and earth meet in this torrent of memory. At this moment, I also submerge into the water along with the tens of thousands of people in the square, silently, for a long time.
Comments