Chris Jordan, Plastic Bags, 2007, photography
This photographic collage depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every five seconds.
Chris Jordan, Cans Seurat in the series Running the Numbers
The human brain is poorly equipped for comprehending massive quantities. This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective; large numbers are relatively new features of our mental landscapes. Thousands, millions, billions, and recently trillions—once reserved for describing cosmic distances of faraway galaxies—have been brought down to Earth in terms of the national deficits we accrue and critically, the stuff we consume. In Running the Numbers, photographer Chris Jordan attempts to convey the vastness of modern consumption by breaking down annual statistics into more graspable quantities depicted by clever visualizations made of individual objects or groups of objects that he photographs.
The 106,000 aluminum cans consumed in the US every 30 seconds, for instance, become the individual dots of Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. “There’s a disconnect that happens when we assume we know what we’re talking about when we talk about hundreds of millions of plastic bottles,” Jordan says. “I’m trying to translate these numbers from the deadening language of statistics into a visual language that allows some kind of comprehension.” (via)
Do you think that this is an effective visualization? What do you think about this photographic collage after slowly observing?
Tokujin Yoshioka often transforms simple everyday objects into beautiful creations. This is apparent in his piece Tornado that he installed in Miami using 2 million plastic straws.
Installation artwork translates well to 2-d platforms such as tumblr because it encourages you to imagine how the space must look. So dedicate some time to observing this work slowly.
What do you think about Yoshioka’s installation?
Kim Alsbrooks uses trash as her canvases. This demonstrates how much garbage collects around us and is readily accessible as a material. This also promotes the use of bricolage, which is when you create using just discarded items around you.
Look Slowly. What do you think about these pieces? What have you created with items around you?
David Janzen, Exshaw Lumber Pile, Oil on Canvas, 2011
Derek Lerner, “Waste” series
The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them.
- Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944)
Betty McGeehan, “Genome 2001,” aluminum on wood
One day each year – April 12 in 2014 – people all over the world visit local museums and galleries to look at art slowly. Participants look at five works of art for 10 minutes each and then meet together over lunch to talk about their experience. That’s it. Simple by design, the goal is to focus on the art and the art of seeing.
