Chris Jordan, a Seattle-based artist, has some amazing photography and digital artwork at his website. In his current series, "Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait," Jordan takes statistics from American culture (energy usage, the environment, consumerism) and digitally parlays those stats into thought-provoking (that term's often overused, but in this case it's appropriate) works of art. The image at left is composed of 200,000 packs of cigarettes, the same number of Americans who die from cigarette smoking every six months.
Check it out — you probably won't believe what you see.
Chris Jordan, a Seattle-based artist, has some amazing photography and digital artwork at his website. In his current series, "Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait," Jordan takes statistics from American culture (energy usage, the environment, consumerism) and digitally parlays those stats into thought-provoking (that term's often overused, but in this case it's appropriate) works of art. The image at left is composed of 200,000 packs of cigarettes, the same number of Americans who die from cigarette smoking every six months.
Check it out — you probably won't believe what you see.
Not that I don't want anything for Christmas, BUT...
Morgan Spurlock ("Supersize Me") has a new film out, "What Would Jesus Buy?", about Reverend Billy, a Vancouverite who preaches against consumerism on Buy Nothing Day. The antithesis to Black Friday, Buy Nothing Day has been popularized, if you will, by Adbusters. From this CNN story:
A review of "What Would Jesus Buy?" in "Christianity Today" questioned whether (Rev. Billy) Talen's act, poking fun at both religion and consumerism, went too far.
"Yes, it's condescending. Yes, it cheapens Christianity," the magazine said, before concluding: "But the whole argument of the film is that our commodity culture has already cheapened Christianity."
Something to think about.