We’re always looking for new and interesting ways to deliver the sustainability message which is why this one caught our eye in a big way. It’s art meets recycling meets stats and figures. Or, in the words of the artist…
Running the Numbers 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 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month.
This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, I hope to raise some questions about the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.
~chris jordan, Seattle, 2007 An art project with a conscience
We’ve posted one of the artworks below but you really need to go to the page to see the idea in all it’s glory. Find it at http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?icl=7
Cans Seurat, 2007
60×92″
Depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.
