By David Houston Jones
The need to visualise COVID-19 has permeated official coverage, frequently in the form of charts showing daily infection growth rates and deaths. The need to reduce the infection rate has been expressed in terms of flattening the ‘curve’ or, for Boris Johnson, of the attempt to ‘squash the sombrero’. News coverage and government web pages are frequently accompanied by computer renderings of the Covid virus, illustrating a deep-seated need to visualise not only the public health situation but the virus itself. Despite an oft-affirmed commitment to transparency, such visualisations are highly coded. Television broadcasts and web pages on Covid are accompanied by computer renderings illustrating the virus’ crown-like spikes and lipid membrane, ostensibly in a bid to improve understanding of the virus and its transmissibility. Such images, however, are also highly visually appealing, speaking to the investment in ‘information aesthetics’ which so often characterises our consumption of visual culture. Images derived from microscopy, while arguably providing a more immediate representation of the virus, are more difficult to read. This project investigates the differing forms of visual representation see in COVID-19 visualisation, and their broader implications for public understanding and debate.
