6 million

the paper clips project was a project started initially to try convey the sheer figure and mass of the 6 million jewish people killed during ww2.
to make the concept a more tangible one, the need for an outlet, or physical comparison becomes necessary.

artists such as sam winston have also experimented with the idea of conveying and converting huge figures of death/birth into a more tangible piece of work, to digest easily.
this is some of the information/quotation taken form his website:

''By the time you’ve read this sentence three people have been born into the world.
By the time you’ve read this sentence two will have passed away.
By the time you’ve lived through this twelve-hour day there will be 100,000 more children on the planet. And in the same twelve hours 70,000 people will have died.

Birthday is a work which sets out to record every individual birth and death over a twelve-hour period. Initially imagined to be realised in real time, marking the beat of each life with a small circle. But I immediately realised it was impossible to keep up with events and it would take many months to graphically capture the rhythm of life and death.

I find it interesting that we use numbers to quantify things yet once we pass a certain amount, scale slips away and it becomes incomprehensible. I wanted to understand what a 100,000 physically was – and for me that entailed marking out that number in pen and pencil.

In my mind I am still unable to comprehend such a figure but at least I know my body now holds a memory of the event."

i said at the beginning of my study of the holocaust that i wanted to try as best i could

to create a personal kind of emotive outcome. this word personal is what's now being challenged, even though each individual circle in actual fact has been considered and drawn and has been personally attended to, the overall picture does  not convey a personal account or closeness to the victims or protagonist involved, it is only the artist as aforementioned by winston that is aware of the notion and concept of the number, amount he's dealing with, be it 100,000 or 6,000,000.

this is something for me to think about, in my final piece. and which i'd rather address; my connection with the victims or the audiences'?