"Running the Numbers"

This is pretty cool artwork by Chris Jordan @ chrisjordan.com - attempting to show the quantity of consumption in this country... (cross posted at Universal Jellyfish )


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First image depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes - 60x120"- /second a detail.
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An American Self-Portrait

This series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 410,000 paper cups used every fifteen minutes. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. The underlying desire is to emphasize the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.

My only caveat about this series is that the prints must be seen in person to be experienced the way they are intended. As with any large artwork, their scale carries a vital part of their substance which is lost in these little web images. Hopefully the JPEGs displayed here might be enough to arouse your curiosity to attend an exhibition, or to arrange one if you are in a position to do so. The series is a work in progress, and new images will be posted as they are completed, so please stay tuned.

~chris jordan, Seattle, 2007

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Some of his other images:

Plastic Cups, "Depicts one million plastic cups, the number used on airline flights in the US every six hours."

Barbie Dolls, "Depicts 32,000 Barbies, equal to the number of elective breast augmentation surgeries performed monthly in the US in 2006."

Plastic Bags, "Depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every five seconds."

Handguns, "Depicts 29,569 handguns, equal to the number of gun-related deaths in the US in 2004."

Cigarettes, "Depicts 65,000 cigarettes, equal to the number of American teenagers under age eighteen who become addicted to cigarettes every month."

Paper Cups, "Depicts 410,000 paper cups, equal to the number of disposable hot-beverage paper cups used in the US every fifteen minutes."

Cans Seurat, "Depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds."