Simulated Dendrochronology of U.S. Immigration 1790-2016, by Pedro M. Cruz, John Wihbey, Avni Ghael & Felipe Shibuya, wins Gold in the category People, Language & Identity, as well as the overall award for “most beautiful”, measured by the most overall votes by the jury.

From the project site: “Nature has its own ways of organizing information: organisms grow and register information from the environment. This is particularly notable in trees, which, through their rings, tell the story of their growth. Drawing on this phenomenon as a visual metaphor, the United States can be envisioned as a tree, with shapes and growing patterns influenced by immigration. The nation, the tree, is hundreds of years old, and its cells are made out of immigrants. As time passes, the cells are deposited in decennial rings that capture waves of immigration.”