At Scale, In Perspective

Charts are inherently meant to present the full story in a single view. At Scale is trying to break away from that.

Stretching across a large wall, it traces the growth of renewable energy capacity in India from 2015 to 2025. The visual language is minimal: a field of dots, where each dot represents a fixed unit of energy capacity, ~10 MW. In early years, the dots are sparse and small—so small that, viewers must peer or use magnifying glasses to see clearly. As viewers move, the dots multiply, grow denser, and increase in size, reflecting the dramatic acceleration of India’s energy transition towards clean energy, evidenced by the fact that between 2020 and 2024, India installed more solar capacity than it did in its entire history. By the final years, the numbers and dots become difficult to absorb at eye-level, forcing viewers to step back, look up, and reposition to comprehend the scale of change.

The chart borrows from our book, Local Grids to Global Power—a data-driven visual journey of India’s energy transition. The transition is not separate from adaptation—it is one of its most visible forms: a large-scale act of resilience that reshapes grids, economies, and everyday routines. Presenting at Data, Otherwise is an opportunity to extend the storytelling. Instead of offering a single, static scale, our installation demands movements from the audience. Understanding emerges only through shifting distance, either through close inspection that reveals detail or through stepping back, which reveals the larger transition underway.

Embedded within the dots are lived experiences as annotations—written stories and/or QR codes to videos of communities and individuals navigating climate change. When seen together, they surface the frictions of the transition, negotiations people make with it, and lives that are influenced by aggregate numbers.