Anthropomass
2021
Data Visualization, Anthropocene
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Description
Anthropomass investigates how human activity accumulates into a form of spatial mass—an imprint that shapes ecological, political, and architectural terrains. The project emerged from an attempt to read landscapes not as static surfaces but as bodies that record the weight of human presence over time.
Drawing from aerial photography, archival mapping, and large-scale environmental datasets, the work visualizes human motion, settlement patterns, and infrastructural expansion as layers of material pressure. Instead of quantifying impact, Anthropomass frames mass as a relational force: density, spread, erosion, and the slow buildup of traces that define contested spaces.
Concept
The project stems from a research question: what happens when we treat human collectives as a form of geological accumulation? Anthropomass converts demographic and spatial information into visual strata, revealing how repeated patterns—construction, removal, movement, abandonment—generate long-term ecological and political consequences.
By working with archival aerial photographs, the project connects past and present forms of occupation, making visible the temporal thickness that underlies everyday environments.
System
• Aerial and satellite image archives
• Layered environmental and demographic datasets
• Custom visualization models mapping density, displacement, and expansion
• Temporal layering simulating environmental "accumulation"
The system is not intended to produce static metrics. It is designed to reveal behavioral materiality—the way human actions, aggregated over decades, become a structural force.
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Research Summary
Anthropomass originated as a tool-building effort to interpret landscape-scale data. It evolved into a visual research method that bridges environmental humanities and spatial analysis. The project exposes the tension between the desire to systematize human influence and the impossibility of fully capturing its complexity.
Next Steps
Future iterations will examine land-use transitions and ecological recovery, mapping how environments absorb, resist, or erase human traces.
Credits
Concept and research: Olga Stadnuk
Archival sources: aerial photography collections, public environmental datasets