This variable animated design was created as part of a project for the Wintersession course "Tools Upside Down" at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and featured the use of text symbols and the event planning feature within the Apple calendar app on my MacBook. This assignment challenged students to create a work of digital design without the use of traditional design software like Photoshop, Procreate, etc.
I used the app to create pixel art images of a figure in a coffin slowly decomposing over a week and turning into a skeleton. The reason I chose a week in January, 2082, is because that's when I'm "scheduled" to die according to the average lifespan of an American male.
The piece is an equally lighthearted and morbid look into how death is compartmentalized in our increasingly busy lives and times. Shoved in between a single work week is the show but efficient death of someone who passed "right on time".
Likewise, it seems death and funerary practices are more like fixed events than long term periods of grief, where you might get the week off from work to grieve the death of a loved one, but you have to go back the following Monday.
