Consumption Project

Essential Questions

-How do my purchases and actions contribute to environmental degradation?

-What small actions can lead to big changes in the environment?

-How can I use math to help make my point stronger?

Major Deliverables

1. Chris Jordan Inspired Art Installation (one per group)

Each group of 2 will create a Photoshop art piece inspired by the work of Chris Jordan http://www.chrisjordan.com/. The purpose of this art piece is to shock the audience about how much we consume. The .psd should be 22 inches by 17inches at a resolution of 120 dpi.

See student examples here: 2011 Examples, 2010 Examples

"Our art piece is a school bus filled with cigarettes. Every hour in America, the amount of cigarettes consumed is about 412,088,000. The volume of this many cigarette butts could fill an average sized school bus."

2. Letter to a Decision Maker (one per student)

Each student will use the writing process learned in Humanities to write a letter to a decision maker. The letter must be professional and persuasive. In the letter you should include: an intro, a paragraph Exposing the Problem, a paragraph Proposing a Solution, and a conclusion.

Steps

Step 1: Expose the Problem (These will be done by hand and turned in EOC April 12th)

-Find facts from reliable sources for your consumption topic

-Write down the website since we need to check your work later.

-Convert your data to US or California usage per minute, hour, day, week, month, and year.

-Convert one of the usage numbers to length, area, volume, and mass

-Compare these conversions to something in the real world (eg-length of plastic bags in a day reaches from Bel Air to West Philly)

-Create a Cluster Map for your topic (where the materials for each part of your item comes from)

-List 3 ideas for art pieces you could create

Step 2: Propose a Solution (These will be done by hand and turned in BOC on April 19th)

-Search for alternatives/ideas for your topic that have already been done that would help reduce consumption (eg-In Ireland they instituted a 20 cent tax on plastic grocery bags and reduced consumption by 90%)

-Calculate the impact

-Clearly state what your starting values are

-Money Raised (if applicable)

-Amount Reduced (if applicable)

(eg: 1 billion bags per year to start, then 90% reduction means only 100 million bags are used per year. At 20 cents per bag times 100 million bags that means 20 million dollars is raised. Whoot there it is!)

Step 3: The Other Side (These will be done by hand and turned in BOC on April 26th)

-Search for opposition to your proposal

-What is the opposition’s stance?

-Come up with counter arguments to their stance. how would you defend your solution.

Step 4: Art Installation (Done on Photoshop)

-Start with a statistic. (ex: the US uses _____bags every second)

-Brainstorm ways you can visually represent this statistic (ex: use ______bags, color them in photoshop and make an American Flag to represent that statistic)

-Sketch out your idea by hand and write out an Artist Statement

-Get critiqued!

-Set canvas size at either 17" X 22" or 22" X 17" at a resolution 120dpi

-After one day of photoshop work we will do a critique of what you have so far. You will not be finished at this point. We will look at your work so you can be sure you are on the right track.

Step 5: Letter to a Decision Maker

-Take good notes during the Business Letter Lecture

-Based on your proposed solution, find the name and address of a decision maker to whom you should send your letter (ex - If you are proposing a local tax on styrofoam containers, then you should send the letter to the mayor or a city council person)

-Write a First Draft- 1st Paragraph = Intro, 2nd Paragraph = Expose the Problem, 3rd Paragraph = Propose a Solution, 4th Paragraph = Conclusion.

-Get critiqued!

-Fix your letter

-Get critiqued!

-Fix your letter

-Send your letter to your decision maker with a self addressed stamped envelope inside.

Interpolation and Extrapolation Data

Each interpolation or extrapolation must include calculations for amounts per minute, amounts per hour, amounts per day, and amounts per year. For example, Artist Chris Jordan depicted 166,000 packing peanuts which is the same number used in the US every hour. He came to this number by finding that there are approximately 1.5 billion packing peanuts used every year and interpolating the data to find our how many were used each hour. Chris based on the yearly usage, Chris can find daily, hourly, and per minute usage using simple math. Check out this video if you need more help: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CdOVlyBOio

Data Comparison – Length, Area, Volume, and Mass

In order to make your point more understandable you need to create comparisons that average people can understand. You will get to choose which comparisons you make and which values of length, area, and volume will be easily known by the general public. To help you do this, you will take your data and make comparisons of length, area, volume, and mass.

For example, based on 166,000 peanuts per hour you could calculate that in 24 hours and at 1.5 inches per peanut that each day the US packaging industry uses enough packing peanuts to make a line from HTHMA to Disneyland (94 miles).