Quantities in the millions and billions are impossible for most people to visualize, and statistics that reach such large numbers are impressive but at some point very inaccessible. Chris Jordan is an artist whose work addresses the issue of visualizing the impossible: his current project, Running the Numbers, focuses on many statistics such as:
-one million plastic cups, the number used on airline flights in the US every six hours
-32,000 the number of elective breast augmentation surgeries performed monthly in the US in 2006
-two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes
-200,000 packs of cigarettes, equal to the number of Americans who die from cigarette smoking every six months
-426,000 cell phones, equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day
….and many more. Below are three images of “Cans Seurat,” 2007, depicting 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.



Go here to see more of Chris’s work.