Of All the People in the World

October 30, 2008 10:46 AM

Of all the People in the World "uses grains of rice to bring formally abstract statistics to startling and powerful life" . via
posted by Dormant Gorilla (13 comments total)

What an awesome concept.
posted by DU at 10:51 AM on October 30, 2008

Flagged for first link, gets a double http. No big deal.

From the site: "Of All The People In All The World" is a show where there is a grain of rice for every person on the planet.

Where do I pick mine up?

Kinda neat to see historical populations.

Reminds me of Paperclips.

"Paperclips" book.

Paperclip Campaign

And I can't find a cite, but thought I read some guy doing something like this with pennies.
posted by cjorgensen at 10:52 AM on October 30, 2008

I did something similar using BBs to represent deaths in the Iraq debacle years ago.

It also looks like my thumbnails for that gallery are screwed up, sorry.
posted by odinsdream at 10:58 AM on October 30, 2008

Whoops, that link was to the image representing coalition deaths.

Here's the image of Iraqi deaths.
posted by odinsdream at 10:59 AM on October 30, 2008

The thumbnails look fine to me and I'm on crappy IE6...
posted by Dormant Gorilla at 11:00 AM on October 30, 2008

Something about this is powerful. Visualizing people this way is strangely meaningful and I like it. Thanks for the post.
posted by nickyskye at 11:07 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

That's incredibly cool, I would love to see it in person to get a better sense of the size comparisons.
posted by stbalbach at 11:15 AM on October 30, 2008

There's a grain of truth to all of this.
posted by Schlimmbesserung at 11:15 AM on October 30, 2008

My favorite is MLK addresses the crowd.

I would love to see this in person. It seems humbling and inspirational at the same time. I'm glad they included individuals as well as nations and groups.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 11:24 AM on October 30, 2008

I would come with my pocket full of rice and spray adhesive.

"WTF, 8 Beatles?" etc. etc.
posted by Meatbomb at 11:56 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

Something about this is powerful. Visualizing people this way is strangely meaningful and I like it. Thanks for the post.

I agree. It makes me think that without much trouble I could fling the entire stadium crowd of a Queen concert across hundreds of scaled square miles and watch their little bodies scatter in the wind. Or I could eat the entire population of the Tiananman Square dissidents still jailed in one swallow. The population of Canada? That would require some cooking and friends, but still...being a giant is awesome!
posted by mrmojoflying at 1:25 PM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

It should really be done with snowflakes.
posted by Lucie at 5:29 AM on October 31, 2008

Afterthought. Human beings. Human beans. Rice and beans. Rice and beings.
posted by nickyskye at 12:16 PM on November 1, 2008