waste land indeed

in the spirit of yesterday's post on disgust at humanity's waste of space, here's a piece by Chris Jordan called "Cans Seurat":

this is a visualization of 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds. wow, pretty!

detail

Jordan says:

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 426,000 cell phones retired every day. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs.

you can see more of his awesome visual manifestations of statistics here.