February 24, 2007

Visualizing Consumption: 60,000 bags or 5 minutes worth of shopping.

Filed under: News | posted by Cordelia

Artist Chris Jordan is working on an incredible series of prints using statistics to illustrate our culture. The print above depicts the number of plastic bags used in the US in 5 minutes.

“Statistics tend to 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 $12.5 million spent every hour on the Iraq war. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs.”
Consumption features heavily and the Seurat painting created from 106,000 aluminum cans - the number Americans consume in 30 seconds is a quite incredible. See a sample of his work here

The artist points out that one really needs to see the prints in person in order for the scale to really convey the full impact of the image so please let us know if your aunt, uncle, girlfriend or neighbhor owns a gallery and would be willing to put on an exhibition of this powerful work.

February 12, 2007

Message in a Bottle

Filed under: News, Water | posted by Cordelia

A company in Edmonton Canada is launching a new bottled water called Earth Water. I know many of you out there are thinking (and rightly so) -do we really need another bottled water? Generally I would agree with you, but here is why I may cut this company a little slack. 100% of the net profits are donated to The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to be used in water aid programs in developing countries. Their mandate is to help get water to those who need it the most and the UN is standing behind them.
If I wear my purist hat, I feel compelled to argue that bottled water is unnecessary, a waste of energy in transport and in the making of the bottle themselves. In addition, harmful toxic chemicals will leach into the soil once land filled as currently, few bottles have the lucky fate of ending up in some new modern fabric. Ultimately bottled water reduces people’s confidence in the municipal source of water fueling the bottled water industry.BUT our current reality is such that people do consume bottled water and will continue to do so in the near future. If this water will both fund projects abroad where they are desperately needed and simultaneously help educate the people about water issues abroad -and hopefully in time lead them to make increasingly informed decisions at home then I think we should embrace it.

I try as much as possible to carry my reusable flask, filling up at water fountains where I can but even I am fallible and have found myself in need of a bottle of water on occasion. And given the choice between Dasani, Poland Spring & Earth Water, I’ll choose the latter every time.

please note: Currently Earth Water is only available in Canada so please contact your local retailers and ask them to supply Earth Water.

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