Vlog: Mark Frauenfelder - Rice Demographics

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Today on Boing Boing tv, a vlog from Mark Frauenfelder:

I saw you at the Skirball Center over the weekend. Well, not you exactly. I saw a single grain of rice that represented you. In fact, there was one grain of rice for every person in the Americas there, arranged in categorized piles: the number of people who eat at McDonalds every day; the number of millionaires in the United States; the number of Billionaires; the number of people in South America who live on less than $2 a day, etc..

It was an exhibit by the London-based theatre company Stan's Cafe, called "Of All the People In The World: The Americas." They created it to help people understand hard-to-visualize statistics, such as the number of people who live in gated communities in the United States, the number of people who have been killed by tasers, and the number of people with AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.

I took some photos of the exhibit and interviewed one of the members of Stan's Cafe, who talked about ""Of All the People In The World," and why they created it.

[#1 posted by Landowner , January 29, 2008 9:53 AM]

Cool idea. I wish I could have read all the tags.

[#2 posted by hombrelobo , January 29, 2008 12:24 PM]

Yes, very intelligent idea.

[#3 posted by Cicolini , January 29, 2008 5:05 PM]

Go Amma go!

[#4 posted by Hastings Hart , January 29, 2008 8:03 PM]

They need a pile for "Number of People Who Have Made Piles of Rice to Depict Numbers of People."

[#5 posted by frigg , January 29, 2008 8:10 PM]

v.v. cool installation, plus it makes me hungry.

p.s. : more of apelad's great-grandpappy, please!

thanks, bOINGbOING!

[#6 posted by Anonymous , February 4, 2008 12:42 PM]

Hey, Stan's Cafe here, this is our show, it's good to be picked up on BoingBoing. One factual correction, we're based in Birmingham UK not London. Hope to see people at the show live some where some time. Keep up the good work.