Feltron Charts
Nicholas Feltron’s life “reports” are quite interesting and strange at the same time to look at. On one hand these are beautifully minimalistic and eye catching graphs and charts that give physical definition to how a man’s life plays out when examined through raw data. On the on the other hand there is something rather dehumanizing and calculating about them. In the 2010/2011 report he simply has an entry that appears several times labeled “Last Day with Dad” or “Dad’s Last Day” that took place during September. This was either the day his father passed away or was the last time he saw him alive yet it is listed in this report as a statistic as if though it has no emotional relevance.
As we are talking about charts and planning the ones that will appear on our final project I find these scatter plots and bar graphs to be absolutely stunning.The second page of the 2010/2011 report is very cool as it has a bar graph for each continent that Nicholas traveled to with the bars placed at the geographical location in the data. This is very useful for what historians do as when we often look at dates and places in research they often loose their real world physicality by simply being placed on a graph or listed. Showing the physical space between two events that are related, such as battles in a war, gives a sense of scope to the subject being discussed.