This week we had to read an article by Golan Levi that talked about computer vision and many of the interactive installations that have been made. One of the installations that captured my attention was a project by the Bureau of Inverse Technology called the “Suicide Box”. Natalie Jeremijenko and Kate Rich placed a video camera at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. When the camera sensed any sort of vertical movement it would turn on and record what was going on. These vertical movements were jumpers.
The quote that caught my attention was “The Golden Gate Bridge is the premier suicide destination in the United States; a 100 day initial deployment period of the Suicide Box recorded 17 suicides. During the same time period the Port Authority counted only 13″. (Levin, 2006). This made me think about the amount of suicides that actually occur versus the amount that gets recorded. What if this difference between statistics and reality is a lot bigger than we can ever imagine? I’m sure there must be people out there who commit suicide, but don’t want anyone to find their bodies. Or what if they don’t have anyone to report them missing? Or what if they do have someone, but they think that they just ran away or have decided not to talk to them anymore? What if the government or authorities know the real number, but only publish the one that looks best for the statistics? How many of the statistical numbers get “fudged” so that the country or particular services look better? I also wouldn’t put it past the media to change numbers, everyone knows they love attention and don’t like admitting their wrong (but that’s another can of worms). I don’t really know what I want to say with this, but I wanted to get my thoughts down before they made my brain explode!
I really hope statistical and reality numbers don’t differ very much because then who are we supposed to trust in the world?
