【TED】Turning Powerful Stats into Art

Chris Jordan: Turning Powerful Stats into Art

https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_jordan_turning_powerful_stats_into_art?

这个是作业，你别忘了看（怒

My work is about the behaviors that we all engage in unconsciously, on a collective level. And what I mean by that, it's the behaviors that we're in denial about, and the ones that operate below the surface of our daily awareness. And as individuals, we all do these things, all the time, everyday. It's like when you're mean to your wife because you're mad at somebody else. Or when you drink a little too much at a party, just out of anxiety. Or when you overeat because your feelings are hurt, or whatever. And when we do these kind of things, when 300 million people do unconscious behaviors, then it can add up to a catastrophic consequence that nobody wants, and no one intended. And that's what I look at with my photographic work.

我的工作是关于我们所有人在集体层面上无意识地参与的行为。我的意思是，这是我们否认的行为，以及那些在我们日常意识的表面之下的行为。作为个人，我们都在做这些事情，一直在做，每天都在做。这就像你对你的妻子很刻薄，因为你对别人很生气。或者当你在聚会上喝得有点多，只是出于焦虑。或者当你暴饮暴食，因为你的感情受到伤害，或者其他。当我们做这些事情时，当3亿人做无意识的行为时，那么它可以累积成一个灾难性的后果，没有人想要，也没有人打算。这就是我的摄影作品所关注的。

This is an image I just recently completed, that is -- when you stand back at a distance, it looks like some kind of neo-Gothic, cartoon image of a factory spewing out pollution. And as you get a little bit closer, it starts looking like lots of pipes, like maybe a chemical plant, or a refinery, or maybe a hellish freeway interchange. And as you get all the way up close, you realize that it's actually made of lots and lots of plastic cups. And in fact, this is one million plastic cups, which is the number of plastic cups that are used on airline flights in the United States every six hours. We use four million cups a day on airline flights, and virtually none of them are reused or recycled. They just don't do that in that industry.

这是我最近刚完成的一幅图像，当你站在远处时，它看起来就像某种新哥特式的卡通形象，一个工厂在喷出污染。当你走近一点，它开始看起来像很多管道，可能是一个化工厂，或者一个炼油厂，或者是一个地狱般的高速公路交汇处。而当你一路走近，你会发现它实际上是由很多很多的塑料杯组成的。而事实上，这是一百万个塑料杯，这是美国航空公司航班上每六小时使用的塑料杯的数量。我们每天在航空公司的航班上使用400万个杯子，而几乎没有一个杯子被重复使用或回收。他们在这个行业中就是不这么做。

Now, that number is dwarfed by the number of paper cups we use every day, and that is 40 million cups a day for hot beverages, most of which is coffee. I couldn't fit 40 million cups on a canvas, but I was able to put 410,000. That's what 410,000 cups looks like. That's 15 minutes of our cup consumption. And if you could actually stack up that many cups in real life, that's the size it would be. And there's an hour's worth of our cups. And there's a day's worth of our cups. You can still see the little people way down there. That's as high as a 42-story building, and I put the Statue of Liberty in there as a scale reference.

现在，这个数字与我们每天使用的纸杯数量相比相形见绌，每天有4000万个纸杯用于热饮，其中大部分是咖啡。我无法在画布上放进4000万个杯子，但我能够放进41万个。这就是41万个杯子的样子。那是我们15分钟的杯子消费。如果你能在现实生活中真的堆起这么多杯子，那就是它的尺寸。我们的杯子有一小时的价值。而我们的杯子有一天的价值。你仍然可以看到下面的小人。那有42层楼那么高，我把自由女神像放在那里作为一个比例参考。

Speaking of justice, there's another phenomenon going on in our culture that I find deeply troubling, and that is that America, right now, has the largest percentage of its population in prison of any country on Earth. One out of four people, one out of four humans in prison are Americans, imprisoned in our country. And I wanted to show the number. The number is 2.3 million Americans were incarcerated in 2005. And that's gone up since then, but we don't have the numbers yet. So, I wanted to show 2.3 million prison uniforms, and in the actual print of this piece, each uniform is the size of a nickel on its edge. They're tiny. They're barely visible as a piece of material, and to show 2.3 million of them required a canvas that was larger than any printer in the world would print. And so I had to divide it up into multiple panels that are 10 feet tall by 25 feet wide. This is that piece installed in a gallery in New York -- those are my parents looking at the piece. (Laughter) Every time I look at this piece, I always wonder if my mom's whispering to my dad, "He finally folded his laundry." (Laughter)

谈到正义，在我们的文化中还有一个现象，我认为令人深感不安，那就是美国，现在，在地球上任何国家中，美国的监狱人口比例最大。四个人中有一个，在监狱中的四个人中有一个是美国人，在我们国家被监禁。我想展示一下这个数字。这个数字是2005年有230万美国人被监禁。从那时起，这个数字上升了，但我们还没有得到数字。因此，我想展示230万件监狱制服，在这幅作品的实际印刷中，每件制服的边缘只有五分钱大小。它们很小。它们作为一块材料几乎不可见，为了展示230万件制服，需要一张比世界上任何打印机都要大的帆布。因此，我不得不把它分成10英尺高、25英尺宽的多个板块。这是安装在纽约一家画廊里的作品--那些是我的父母在看这个作品。(笑声）每次我看这个作品，我总是想知道我妈妈是否在对我爸爸耳语："他终于叠好了他的衣服。" (笑声)

I want to show you some pieces now that are about addiction. And this particular one is about cigarette addiction. I wanted to make a piece that shows the actual number of Americans who die from cigarette smoking. More than 400,000 people die in the United States every year from smoking cigarettes. And so, this piece is made up of lots and lots of boxes of cigarettes. And, as you slowly step back, you see that it's a painting by Van Gogh, called "Skull with Cigarette." It's a strange thing to think about, that on 9/11, when that tragedy happened, 3,000 Americans died. And do you remember the response? It reverberated around the world, and will continue to reverberate through time. It will be something that we talk about in 100 years. And yet on that same day, 1,100 Americans died from smoking. And the day after that, another 1,100 Americans died from smoking. And every single day since then, 1,100 Americans have died. And today, 1,100 Americans are dying from cigarette smoking. And we aren't talking about it -- we dismiss it. The tobacco lobby, it's too strong. We just dismiss it out of our consciousness. And knowing what we know about the destructive power of cigarettes, we continue to allow our children, our sons and daughters, to be in the presence of the influences that start them smoking. And this is what the next piece is about.

我现在想给你们看一些关于成瘾的作品。而这个特别的作品是关于香烟成瘾的。我想做一个作品，显示死于吸烟的美国人的实际数量。在美国，每年有超过40万人死于吸烟。因此，这个作品是由很多很多的香烟盒组成的。而且，当你慢慢后退时，你会发现这是梵高的一幅画，叫做 "带烟头骨"。想想看，这是一个奇怪的事情，在9/11事件中，当那场悲剧发生时，有3000名美国人死亡。而你还记得当时的反应吗？它在世界范围内产生了反响，并将继续在时间上产生反响。这将是我们在100年后谈论的事情。然而，在同一天，有1100名美国人死于吸烟。在那之后的一天，又有1100名美国人死于吸烟。从那时起的每一天，都有1100名美国人死亡。而今天，有1100名美国人死于吸烟。而我们并没有谈论它--我们拒绝它。烟草游说团，它太强大了。我们只是把它从我们的意识中排除。我们知道香烟的破坏力，但我们继续让我们的孩子，我们的儿子和女儿，在那些让他们开始吸烟的影响下存在。这就是下一篇文章的内容。

This is just lots and lots of cigarettes: 65,000 cigarettes, which is equal to the number of teenagers who will start smoking this month, and every month in the U.S. More than 700,000 children in the United States aged 18 and under begin smoking every year.

这只是很多很多的香烟：65,000支香烟，这相当于这个月以及美国每个月将开始吸烟的青少年人数，美国每年有70多万18岁及以下的儿童开始吸烟。

One more strange epidemic in the United States that I want to acquaint you with is this phenomenon of abuse and misuse of prescription drugs. This is an image I've made out of lots and lots of Vicodin. Well, actually, I only had one Vicodin that I scanned lots and lots of times. (Laughter) And so, as you stand back, you see 213,000 Vicodin pills, which is the number of hospital emergency room visits yearly in the United States, attributable to abuse and misuse of prescription painkillers and anti-anxiety medications. One-third of all drug overdoses in the U.S. -- and that includes cocaine, heroin, alcohol, everything -- one-third of drug overdoses are prescription medications. A strange phenomenon.

在美国还有一种奇怪的流行病，我想让你们认识一下，就是这种滥用和误用处方药的现象。这是我用很多很多维柯丁制作的图片。嗯，实际上，我只有一片维柯丁，我扫描了很多很多次。(笑声）因此，当你站在后面，你看到213,000个维柯丁药片，这是美国每年医院急诊室的就诊人数，归因于滥用和误用处方止痛药和抗焦虑药物。美国所有药物过量的三分之一 -- 这包括可卡因、海洛因、酒精，一切 -- 三分之一的药物过量是处方药。一个奇怪的现象。

This is a piece that I just recently completed about another tragic phenomenon. And that is the phenomenon, this growing obsession we have with breast augmentation surgery. 384,000 women, American women, last year went in for elective breast augmentation surgery. It's rapidly becoming the most popular high school graduation gift, given to young girls who are about to go off to college. So, I made this image out of Barbie dolls, and so, as you stand back you see this kind of floral pattern, and as you get all the way back, you see 32,000 Barbie dolls, which represents the number of breast augmentation surgeries that are performed in the U.S. each month. The vast majority of those are on women under the age of 21. And strangely enough, the only plastic surgery that is more popular than breast augmentation is liposuction, and most of that is being done by men.

这是我最近刚完成的一篇关于另一个悲惨现象的文章。这就是我们对隆胸手术日益迷恋的现象。去年有38.4万名妇女，美国妇女，去做选择性隆胸手术。它正迅速成为最受欢迎的高中毕业礼物，送给即将上大学的年轻女孩。因此，我用芭比娃娃制作了这个图像，所以，当你站在后面时，你看到这种花卉图案，当你一路走来，你看到32,000个芭比娃娃，这代表了美国每月进行的隆胸手术的数量。其中绝大部分是在21岁以下的女性身上。而奇怪的是，唯一比隆胸手术更受欢迎的整形手术是吸脂手术，而且大部分是由男性做的。

Now, I want to emphasize that these are just examples. I'm not holding these out as being the biggest issues. They're just examples. And the reason that I do this, it's because I have this fear that we aren't feeling enough as a culture right now. There's this kind of anesthesia in America at the moment. We've lost our sense of outrage, our anger and our grief about what's going on in our culture right now, what's going on in our country, the atrocities that are being committed in our names around the world. They've gone missing; these feelings have gone missing. Our cultural joy, our national joy is nowhere to be seen. And one of the causes of this, I think, is that as each of us attempts to build this new kind of worldview, this holoptical worldview, this holographic image that we're all trying to create in our mind of the interconnection of things: the environmental footprints 1,000 miles away of the things that we buy; the social consequences 10,000 miles away of the daily decisions that we make as consumers.

现在，我想强调的是，这些只是例子。我不认为这些是最大的问题。它们只是例子而已。我之所以这样做，是因为我有这样的担心，即我们现在作为一种文化没有足够的感觉。目前在美国有一种麻醉的感觉。我们已经失去了我们的愤怒感，我们的愤怒和我们的悲伤，对我们的文化现在发生的事情，对我们国家发生的事情，对在世界各地以我们的名义犯下的暴行。它们已经消失了；这些感觉已经消失了。我们的文化快乐，我们的民族快乐无处可寻。我认为，造成这种情况的原因之一是，当我们每个人都试图建立这种新的世界观，这种整体的世界观，这种全息图像，我们都试图在我们的脑海中创造事物之间的相互联系：我们购买的东西在1000英里以外的环境足迹；我们作为消费者作出的日常决定在10000英里以外的社会后果。

As we try to build this view, and try to educate ourselves about the enormity of our culture, the information that we have to work with is these gigantic numbers: numbers in the millions, in the hundreds of millions, in the billions and now in the trillions. Bush's new budget is in the trillions, and these are numbers that our brain just doesn't have the ability to comprehend. We can't make meaning out of these enormous statistics. And so that's what I'm trying to do with my work, is to take these numbers, these statistics from the raw language of data, and to translate them into a more universal visual language, that can be felt. Because my belief is, if we can feel these issues, if we can feel these things more deeply, then they'll matter to us more than they do now. And if we can find that, then we'll be able to find, within each one of us, what it is that we need to find to face the big question, which is: how do we change? That, to me, is the big question that we face as a people right now: how do we change? How do we change as a culture, and how do we each individually take responsibility for the one piece of the solution that we are in charge of, and that is our own behavior?

当我们试图建立这种观点，并试图教育自己了解我们文化的艰巨性时，我们必须处理的信息是这些巨大的数字：数以百万计的数字，数以亿计的数字，以及现在的万亿数字。布什的新预算是数万亿，而这些数字是我们的大脑没有能力去理解的。我们无法从这些巨大的统计数据中获得意义。因此，这就是我的工作所要做的，就是把这些数字，这些来自原始数据语言的统计数字，翻译成一种更普遍的视觉语言，让人感受到。因为我的信念是，如果我们能感受到这些问题，如果我们能更深刻地感受到这些事情，那么它们对我们来说就比现在更重要。如果我们能找到这一点，那么我们就能在我们每个人的内心找到我们需要找到的东西，来面对这个大问题，也就是：我们如何改变？对我来说，这就是我们现在作为一个民族所面临的大问题：我们如何改变？我们如何作为一种文化进行改变，以及我们每个人如何对我们负责的解决方案中的一个部分负责，那就是我们自己的行为？

My belief is that you don't have to make yourself bad to look at these issues. I'm not pointing the finger at America in a blaming way. I'm simply saying, this is who we are right now. And if there are things that we see that we don't like about our culture, then we have a choice. The degree of integrity that each of us can bring to the surface, to bring to this question, the depth of character that we can summon, as we show up for the question of how do we change -- it's already defining us as individuals and as a nation, and it will continue to do that, on into the future. And it will profoundly affect the well-being, the quality of life of the billions of people who are going to inherit the results of our decisions. I'm not speaking abstractly about this, I'm speaking -- this is who we are in this room, right now, in this moment.

我的信念是，你不必让自己变坏来看待这些问题。我不是以指责的方式将矛头指向美国。我只是说，这就是我们现在的样子。如果我们看到我们的文化中有一些我们不喜欢的东西，那么我们可以选择。我们每个人都能为这个问题带来多大程度的正直，我们能唤起多大程度的性格，当我们出现在我们如何改变的问题上时 -- 它已经决定了我们作为个人和国家，并且它将继续这样做，直到未来。它将深刻影响数十亿人的福祉和生活质量，他们将继承我们决定的结果。我不是在抽象地谈论这个问题，我是在说 -- 这就是我们在这个房间里的人，现在，在这个时刻。

Thank you and good afternoon. (Applause)