The first keynote speaker of the Greener Gadgets Conference was Chris Jordan, a Seattle-based photographer and environmental advocate.
If you aren’t familiar with Chris and his work, you might wonder why a photographer would be a keynote speaker at a conference dedicated to cleaner and greener consumer electronics.
Through a series of digital images and composites entitled Running the Numbers, Jordan manages to illustrate the staggering quantity of modern mass consumption.
Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, according to Jordan, and all too often these figures serve to disconnect meaning from the harsh realities these figures represent.
In Jordan’s words:
This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. The underlying desire is to emphasize the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.
Jordan went on to note on his website that he has some reservation about showing his images online, as the limited viewing space of a browser window reduces the visual impact of his larger pieces. However, when viewed at the Greener Gadgets Conference, Jordan’s pieces took on new life, being projected across the stage in large format.
When viewed from afar, Jordan’s images often form a photo mosaic, such as his reproduction of George Seaurat’s La Grande Jatte depicts 106, 000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.
Some of Jordan’s other photos show 1,410,000 brown paper bags (US consumption per hour) look like, how high 410,000 paper cups (US consumption per 15 minutes) reach, and a sea of 60,000 plastic shopping bags, representing the amount used every FIVE SECONDS in the US!
One point Jordan made was was how proud the Aluminum can industry is over the fact that we recycle 50% of the aluminum cans we use in this country. It sounds good on the surface, Chris said, until you consider that we use 106,000 cans every 30 seconds. That’s 111,427,200,000 every year (yes, billion). If you could stack up the number of cans we use in a single day you’d have a pile a mile wide and a mile high.
In commenting on his work Jordan noted that:
As an American consumer myself, I am in no position to finger wag; but I do know that when we reflect on a difficult question in the absence of an answer, our attention can turn inward, and in that space may exist the possibility of some evolution of thought or action. So my hope is that these photographs can serve as portals to a kind of cultural self-inquiry.
Jordan commented that the problem with the green movement is that there is a palpable hesitation preventing a critical mass in action because everyone is waiting for everyone else to do something.
Continuing further, Jordan said that:
We can’t wait another generation; we can’t wait another 10 years. And I can tell you why the green movement isn’t cool yet. Michael Jordan changed the face of basketball fashion overnight when he showed up to the game wearing baggy shorts … He had a 1-800 number to the minds of tens of thousands of young people. The green movement doesn’t have a Michael Jordan.
Jordan noted that he loves green luminaries like Paul Hawken, Al Gore, Bill McKibben, but they’re just not cool like Michael Jordan (and not just because of his last name either.)
In bringing his talk to a close, Jordan pressed further for the reconceptualization of the green movement under the banner of consumer electronics:
When new cell phones come out, every year they’re twice as cool. Cooler than any sci-fi writer could ever imagine. They’re the bowsprit in front of the ship, going into the waves of consumer culture. When electronics show that sustainable is officially the new America cool, then the sprint will begin. The hesitation will end in a snap. The world will transform and it will be traced back to the innovations made today. I feel it in my bones that 2008 is the year.
A full video archive of the Greener Gadgets Conference can be found here. There you’ll find Podcast subscription information as well.
Article by Curtiss P. Martin, Clean Technology Editor at ScribeMedia.org
Video by Alexandra (Sasha) Lerman, Editor / Producer at ScribeMedia.orgCurtiss thinks Chris Jordan and Graffiti Research Labs need to make nice and collaborate on some large public projections ;^)
