Representation is a generative art piece and data visualization about gender representation in global politics.
This is my first NFT piece as well as my first attempt at generative art. With this work, I wanted to explore how data visualization can take place on the fxhash NFT platform. The result is a work that unfolds the data visualization across all the minted variations, and at the same time, each singular piece becomes a microcosm of the larger data set.
How exactly do I read the data?
Each minted artwork gets assigned 6 countries from different regions. 1 country from the Pacific, 1 from Europe, 1 from Asia, 1 from the Americas, 1 from Sub-saharan Africa and 1 from the Middle East and North Africa.
Each circle in the artwork represents the gender split of the parliament(s) in one of those countries by using colors. The legend in the bottom right can be used to decipher which color means what. The color on the left represents men, while the color on the right represents women.
Each unique artwork is also given a random choice of size, placement and color schemes. They don't signify anything; they're just there to add variety. The data can only be read from the color gradients of the circles.
If you look at the entire #181 piece, you'll see that the first circle actually has quite a lot of yellow in it. This means that women are pretty well represented in that country. The features for that variation shows that the first country represents New Zealand. They have 49,2 % women, so the gradient makes sense. The fourth circle, Honduras, doesn't have as much yellow, which means that the amount of women in that parliament is less than NZ.
For comparison, you can take a look at #179. The gradient there should go from blue to red, but you can almost only see blue in that piece, which means that women are not well represented in those 6 countries. In that piece, the most equal gender split is Canada with 30,5% women. All other countries are below that percentage, which results in a very blue piece.
What does it mean?
It can be quite hard to read the data of the individual countries, because the circles tend to overlap, but that is 100% intentional.
It's clear that the fight for representation is an international struggle, and without borders. Even if Canada has 30,5% women (which is still very low in a country which has more women than men), it doesn't mean much on a global scale, when Thailand and Turkey only have an abysmal 15,8% and 17,3%.
If you look at the collection as a whole, you'll also quickly come to the conclusion that women are well represented globally. Most minted pieces are very single colored, and you won't find a piece where all six circles have visible gradients, simply because there's so much global inequality.
Data source
The parliamentary data and regional groupings come from IPU Parline.
Easter eggs
- The piece adapts to the screen size it's on, so I recommend checking it out on different devices. You might see something new.
- The amount of pieces put for sale matches the amount of countries in the data set. The price is the amount of countries divided by 100.
- The color schemes in the piece are inspired by various LGBTQIA+ flags.