What we chose not to measure reveals what we chose not to value.
Mimi Onuoha
The Library of Missing Datasets (2016)
A near-empty map of Australia. Only coastline. No roads. No labels. Funded areas appear as warm particle clouds where per-capita grant and contract spend is high. The deserts are pure black.
873 Local Government Areas meet the disadvantage + low-funding threshold. Each one is a void on the map. Scroll over any void and a label appears describing what the public data does not count in that place. Care labour. Kinship networks. Cultural governance. Tuesday afternoon check-ins. The things Onuoha named in her cabinet of empty folders.
The episode includes a downloadable 44-page companion atlas naming every one of the 873 LGAs with its SEIFA decile, its funding gap score, and its population aged under 18.
- ·CivicGraph · mv_funding_deserts (materialised view)
- ·SEIFA 2021 socioeconomic disadvantage data (ABS)
- ·QLD, NSW, VIC, WA funding registers for per-capita spend
- ·ABS LGA boundaries and under-18 population estimates
deck.gl + Mapbox GL with a stripped basemap. Custom dot-density shader for funded areas. Dashed-outline polygons for desert LGAs. Scroll-linked overlay of the missing-datasets labels.
The map the state draws is the map the state cares about. The 873 voids are the map the state chose not to draw.
Artefact 003 — The 873 Postcode Atlas
Every episode ships alongside a printed, news-pegged ledger. The artefact proves the episode's point at the scale of one specific recent event. See the full artefact series at aesthetics.act.place/artefact.