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Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait (PICS)

chrisjordan.com — A collection of pictures which examine contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something, like fifteen million sheets of office paper. The goal is to emphasize the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.

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  • EthanFeldman, on 01/14/2008, -24/+4down at 17 diggs???
    • Dokument, on 01/14/2008, -8/+6no. they are just joking with you.



      i mean really was that an actual question?
    • Virgule, on 01/14/2008, -0/+2yup :(
      I spotted this work on reddit earlier today. I could barely make it load properly then, now its flat out dead. I just want all images to load so I can archive this properly
  • Barman, on 01/14/2008, -14/+11Wow those are amazing works. Ugh... smoking.
  • Member148, on 01/14/2008, -4/+11Good way to get a point across.
    • HalBSure, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1Seriously. I just saw some guy in a Red Wings jersey staring intently at the aluminum cans picture.
  • Dested, on 01/14/2008, -3/+86"I need 30 thousand handguns and 200 thousand Vicodin for.... art"
  • brooklynzoo, on 01/14/2008, -7/+2its the drugs man!
  • willscottsi, on 01/14/2008, -4/+7Wow, I'd love to see them in person. Of course, now my wife will never hear the end of it for her bottled water addiction :)
  • stackered, on 01/14/2008, -6/+5Holy *****. Some of those numbers were ridiculous. Dugg.
  • Reaktor5, on 01/14/2008, -3/+15The guy behind these was on The Colbert Report not too long ago.
    Pretty neat stuff.
    • maf54, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1Very interesting. I find some of them hard to believe though. If the plastic bottles statistic is true, it means that the US uses over 210 billion bottles a year. That's almost impossible. Or, in other words, every single person uses 2 bottles per day. Anyone else think that's strange.

      Sources would help.
  • maddla, on 01/14/2008, -8/+15213,000 Photoshop Layers... is the amount of layers required to make one photograph...
    • themastersb, on 01/14/2008, -5/+22That would be equivalent to OVER 9000 hours in ms paint.
    • Virgule, on 01/14/2008, -2/+1and all he got is this lousy gallery :(
  • Djokuuskaj, on 01/14/2008, -15/+3dug down for no penises representing the amount of accidental children born.
  • Lacitpo, on 01/14/2008, -3/+95Mirror: http://callmetom.net/mirror/runningthenumbers/runn ...
  • LmaoTzu, on 01/14/2008, -27/+2HAY GUYZ I FOUND WALDO, WUTS MY PRIZE ?
    • Dokument, on 01/14/2008, -6/+5burrying
      • gllopc, on 01/14/2008, -1/+9Although I'd prefer if you said "burying". "Burry" means having pricks. Burrying would be to give pricks. Either way - I'm laughing.
  • BeeArePro, on 01/14/2008, -26/+7Mirror:
    http://www.artandantiqueemporium.com/mirror/big-im ...
    • sfgeek, on 01/14/2008, -2/+3You're an Ass.
      • unr8d, on 01/14/2008, -1/+0No, your a butt hole!
      • edwartica, on 01/14/2008, -1/+1a dumb ass.
        Ever wonder if Red Forman had a logic meltdown - he kept saying he was going to put his foot up people's ass, and he kept calling them dumb asses. putting his foot up thier ass if they were asses to begin with would, well, never mind, This is a dumb ass comment.
  • saggygrandma, on 01/14/2008, -1/+26123...... Number of Diggs before the server goes down
  • badqat, on 01/14/2008, -10/+2Meh...
  • egonSchiele, on 01/14/2008, -16/+4wow, america, have you looked in the mirror lately? because you look pretty ugly.
    • unr8d, on 01/14/2008, -4/+3There is nothing wrong with fat people. Let them be.
    • chris1012, on 01/14/2008, -1/+1agreed 100%
    • unreg, on 01/14/2008, -0/+0Since we don't have comparatives as to the usage or issues plaguing other nations, it might be a little early to start throwing stones.
  • joot2112, on 01/14/2008, -12/+13Some of them actually make me feel nauseous or want to cry.
    • unr8d, on 01/14/2008, -8/+6You make me feel nauseous. Now go cry yourself to sleep.
      • stuma9000, on 01/14/2008, -0/+8Wow unr8d, you're a jerk. The statistics represented are indeed most troubling if you can comprehend them in context.
        • posneg, on 01/14/2008, -3/+1Oh gosh. What a sensationalist you are.
  • JonTheGoose, on 01/14/2008, -2/+24You ever get that feeling when you say a word over and over again it starts to sound weird??

    Depicts, depicts, depicts, depicts, depicts.......
  • sirlancelot88, on 01/14/2008, -4/+5Such waste...
  • goodgame, on 01/14/2008, -4/+1repost?
  • Gamer2k4, on 01/14/2008, -2/+4Dugg for this picture: http://callmetom.net/mirror/runningthenumbers/runn ...
    • Virgule, on 01/14/2008, -0/+2It bring out the scale of this art. It truly give the right perspective..
      • Gamer2k4, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1Actually, I just got a kick out of them staring at a brown wall.

        (Yes, I know it's the prison uniform picture.)
    • mahdaeng, on 01/14/2008, -0/+2Are they counting, just to make sure?
  • topace3000, on 01/14/2008, -4/+16Yes, there certainly are a lot of people in the United States with the means to live well.
    • mrraven200, on 01/14/2008, -3/+2Yes there certainly are more than enough U.S. citizens to live wastefully, stupidly and arrogantly. I corrected your post, you're welcome (U.S. citizen here BTW).
  • garfonzo, on 01/14/2008, -0/+7why is the whole page repeated?
    • iofthestorm, on 01/14/2008, -0/+2Haha, I wonder that too. It's certainly not helping his bandwidth usage... although at least the images don't actually get loaded twice.
  • rebolyte, on 01/14/2008, -0/+212,000,000 plastic bottles. 426,000 cell phones. 1,140,000 paper bags. 106,000 aluminum cans.
    XXX,XXX number of people who won't understand what this truly means, the effects it will have.
  • sirjimbob, on 01/14/2008, -0/+3Chris Jordan is amazing, saw an exhibition of his here in NYC about a year ago.
  • Fatcheeseguy, on 01/14/2008, -4/+1May I have a mirror please?
  • woodcoxcb, on 01/14/2008, -4/+2'shopped.
  • UtopiaInTheSky, on 01/14/2008, -0/+3Wasn't this artist on The Daily Show ?
  • strikes12, on 01/14/2008, -1/+2"(pic) Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes".
    Not to call ***** because this is a good cause, but the total population is 300 million.
    That means in a room of 150 people, one is drinking a bottle every 5 minutes, 24 hours a day. And that's just not happening. Even with aluminum cans added in.
    Would love to see what the real figures for this one are.
    • Tanktunker, on 01/14/2008, -0/+3Or rather each person uses an average of ~2 plastic bottles a day, which isn't such a stretch.
    • LaerrusFish, on 01/14/2008, -1/+2why dig this comment down? These figures are over blown. It's the people who overblown the statistics that steal credence from the facts. Never sell a point for more than it's worth.
    • tmattoneill, on 01/15/2008, -0/+1Certainly looks feasible to me...

      The United States is the world’s leading consumer of bottled water, with Americans drinking 26 billion liters in 2004, or approximately one 8-ounce glass per person every day. Mexico has the second highest consumption, at 18 billion liters. China and Brazil follow, at close to 12 billion liters each. Ranking fifth and sixth in consumption are Italy and Germany, using just over 10 billion liters of bottled water each.

      http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2006/Update51_ ...
  • south409, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1$12.5 million. Depicts the amount of currency missing at the end of the exhibition...
  • Jenadae, on 01/14/2008, -0/+84% of our population dies to cigarettes a year.
    89107200000 disposable batteries created a year. 2970 per person.
    96000000 trees destroyed per year for mail order magazines.
    10448320000000 Plastic bottles used per year. 3494 per person.
    96096000 Commercial flights a year. .32 per person.
    155064000 Cell phones retired a year. .5 per person.
    9959040000 Paper bags used a year. 33.1 per person
    111121920000 Aluminum cans used a year. 370.4 per person.
    780000 Teens addicted to smoking each year.
    377395200000 Plastic bags used per year. 1257.98 per person.
    786240000000 Sheets of office paper used per year. 2620.8 per person.
    109200000000 Dollars spent a year in Iraq. 364 dollars per person.

    These numbers based on 300 million people living in America (actual estimate is 303,169,000) and based on there being 52 weeks in a year. Feel free to correct me I have had 7 beers tonight...
    • cambob76, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1You are corrected. Feel better?
    • sammypai, on 01/14/2008, -3/+1oh noes teh wasted
    • RockinRoel, on 01/14/2008, -0/+3I can't imagine myself wasting all that stuff. I mean 2970 disposable batteries per person per year? I can imagine that there are a lot of people like me in america who seldomly use disposable batteries and others who waste lots and lots of them. And the paper bags figure is rather odd. When my brother went to New York, they always got paper bags to hide their beers in.
    • ryan83189, on 01/14/2008, -0/+42970 batteries is a little high, perhaps 29.70?
    • SwingCorey, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1I have a feeling that these number are not just personal usage, but also factoring in corporate use.
      For example, I don't have my computer on 24 hours a day and neither do any of my co-workers, but my workplace has a computer for each of us, plus the servers, plus...
      So, our average is that, for each employee, our PC is on 34.3 hours/day.

      Nice, huh?
    • EmitStop, on 01/15/2008, -0/+1"10448320000000 Plastic bottles used per year. 3494 per person."
      What? Thats almost 10 bottles per day, per person.
  • triont, on 01/14/2008, -3/+3Dugg for Marlboro smooth........Smoke time. :)
  • LaerrusFish, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1Remember the chances of winning the US lottery are 18 million to 1
    • LaerrusFish, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1damn it, I ment to say California lottery
  • Shenaniganz08, on 01/14/2008, -1/+2i hate fake mosaics ( the 100 dollar bill one )
    • ligyron, on 01/14/2008, -1/+0Maybe it's 125,000 unique $100 bills, which over the years would come in all kinds of shades
  • Halsfield, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1@ brooklyn zoo - no its not the drugs, its the cigarettes.

    also, should we make pain killers illegal because people use them to kill themselves? quick, do the same to car's sitting in garages, cliffs are no illegal also, and high bridges. or should we work as a society to bring depressed people back to good mental health, instead of medicating them, and forgetting them, leaving them to rot in the mental hell of their own creation.
  • billyfalconer, on 01/14/2008, -0/+5http://home.ripway.com/2004-1/54222/warpresBIG.jpg
  • Wilzer, on 01/14/2008, -1/+0Kevin Cosner, Wild Turkey, and Vicodin
  • rawky33a, on 01/14/2008, -0/+5This is all very nice but has anyone found waldo yet?
  • Error601, on 01/14/2008, -2/+1What's sad is the dorks that think this is art and culture.
  • JMellissa, on 01/14/2008, -1/+2Kind of over-whelming isn't it? Looks like this planet suffers mostly from an infestation of humans.
  • D3ADp00L, on 01/14/2008, -1/+0thats some mind opening stuff man i hope people see this and start to realize what it is that they have been doing......
  • 3lit3, on 01/14/2008, -0/+0That's what she said
  • firstmanonmars, on 01/14/2008, -0/+2What's so bad about the number of commercial flights? A fully loaded jet burns less fuel per passenger than a single occupant honda civic.
  • fflis, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1If your gonna create something awesome which, lets face it digg users will find, try having some bandwidth please..
  • mogebier, on 01/14/2008, -2/+3Well, that is a waste of time. Anyone can do "Art" like that. Not impressed.
  • scrappyvintage, on 01/14/2008, -0/+2What's the significance of Denali - Denial.
  • iLemon, on 01/14/2008, -0/+2How much energy does it take to run the data centers, network, and workstations to view these pages? Its easy to shine the light, on what you think somebody else is doing in excess.
  • Cretius0, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1However many jokes are made about this subject, this is a horrifying truth. America is consumed by consumerism, dogmatic religious values, and a media spiraling out of control. I am not saying that all of these problems are attributed to these three concepts, although many are.
    • mahdaeng, on 01/14/2008, -0/+2While I agree with your statement, it is wrong to limit it to America alone. All industrial countries have their problems with consumerism, waste, etc.
  • Puttzy, on 01/14/2008, -2/+3This is Michael Moore "art"
    • tmattoneill, on 01/15/2008, -0/+1why is that? Facts that underline critical failings in our society presented in a unique and compelling way? I assume that's what you mean by Michael Moore art.
      • Puttzy, on 01/15/2008, -0/+1Actually I meant pointing out the semi-obvious, yet somewhat distorted, facts and criticizing without offering a viable solution.
  • adraft, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1We are a giant, developed country. Was anyone honestly surprised we produce that much waste?
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