Thomas Information Graphics

From Sense Perceptions > to > Language

From Right Brain > to > Left Brain functioning

This goes directly to what I do as a visual artist.

Thought Experiments:

1. Psychology:
   Attuning to one’s sense perceptions and thusly emotional state > & > Naming your emotional state.
   .
2. Western Political Economy:
   And let’s say the Himba tribe are western leaders willing to lie to skew outcomes (for that is what They are attached to). And let’s say they are talking about religion, education, economy or the environment.

   Can you see how without an earnest attachment to what we see, western leaders are capable of creating a “War on Terror”, “Privatization of the Commons” including the “Failure of Public Education”, “Trillion Dollar Bailouts for Capital”, the “Tar Sands”, “Climate Change” and the “Depletion of the Environment?

   I think we need to adopt more earnest subjects to be our leaders.

Thomas Art, Ways of Seeing

[ Lake Erie Death Watch ] By Barry Yeoman for the NRDC

Brought back from the brink once before, a Great Lake again faces biological collapse

What would it mean to lose one of our Great Lakes? The environmental and economic calamity could devastate the region’s tourism, sport fishing industry, drinking water supply, and wildlife, and could also take a toll on human health. And there would be plenty of blame to go around, from changing agricultural methods to inattentive politicians to weaknesses in our nation’s bedrock environmental protections — many of which can partially trace their existence to concern over Lake Erie in the first place.

Erie is the most fertile of the Great Lakes: It contains only 2 percent of their water but 50 percent of their fish. Its biological abundance, and its location in a densely settled corner of the Midwest, make the prospect of collapse all the more frightening. If conditions grow worse, imploding native fish populations could decimate Lake Erie’s recreational fishing industry. (Fishing generates $7 billion a year throughout the Great Lakes.) The water supply for 11 million people could become undrinkable without expensive treatment. And blue-green algae, linked to liver cancer in China and fatal poisonings in Brazil, could pose a grave threat to people here, too, particularly if ingested.

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Thomas Environment, The Water I Drink, What I am Looking at

via the [ Washington Note ]

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people…

- President Eisenhower, Chance for Peace Speech
April 16,1953

Thomas Adaptive Reuse, Infrastructure, International, Misc, National, Ways of Seeing, What I am Looking at

via [ Chart Wars ] by Alex Lundry

Vision is our most dominant sense. It takes up 50% of our brain’s resources. And despite the visual nature of text, pictures are actually a superior and more efficient delivery mechanism for information. In neurology, this is called the ‘pictorial superiority effect’ [...] If I present information to you orally, you’ll probably only remember about 10% 72 hours after exposure, but if I add a picture, recall soars to 65%. So we are hard-wired to find visualization more compelling than a spreadsheet, a speech of a memo.

Thomas Information Graphics

[ DATA DUMP ] Recent portfolio of work

[Click images to enlarge]

Encaustic, 21″ x 24″

Encaustic, 12″ x 14″

Encaustic, 21″ x 24″

Thomas In My Studio

via [ Andrew Sullivan ]

BP didn’t think it important to include [the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill] in the report because, according to the fine print, there’s been “no accurate determination” of how much oil actually leaked into the Gulf of Mexico. And so because there’s no exact measure, they didn’t think they should include it.

Thomas Information Graphics

via ProPublica

Thomas Information Graphics

What are the risks of an earthquake beneath a reactor near you? This image combines a 2006map by the United States Geological Survey showing varying seismic hazards across the U.S. with locations of nuclear reactors. Reactors in black are active; reactors in blue are proposed sites for the new model known as the AP1000. Probability of strong shaking increases from very low (white), to moderate (blue, green, and yellow), to high (orange, pink, and red). Credit: Kimberly Leonard/Center for Public Integrity.

And this from the USGS

Thomas Information Graphics

Immaterials: Light painting WiFi from Timo on Vimeo.

Thomas Information Graphics

I made this painting 15 years ago. It is fairly large 48″x 60″. I still find myself in this relationship to what I sense around me.

Thomas In My Studio

This TED Talk of Naomi Klein reminds me that I need to right a wrong. I never gave her work a fair look. Perhaps it was because she focused on some of the same narratives that I did and I held those around my circle in much higher esteem. I need to change that and finally read her book the “Shock Doctrine.”

Regardless, this is a great talk that proportions the right mix of critique in this tragedy: Risk Assessments, The Precautionary Principle (Thanks Carolyn Raffensperger), Hubris, and Feminism.

Thomas Climate Change, Tar Sands, What I am Looking at

“There are somethings in our society, in our world, for which I am proud to be maladjusted.”

- MLK

Thomas Misc, What I am Looking at

After 50 cent ran away with ~$50 million pumping penny stocks on twitter, I thought it appropriate to listen to a little K’naan.

Thomas What I am Looking at

[ Invitation to World Literature ] via Annenberg Media

I love this series.

It reveals the humanity that is at risk in our debates on education. In East Chicago the “bean counters”, the “economic development gurus”, the “industry” continually invoke the utility of an education but never its Humanity. As a result they have created toxic assets of our commons. The land we use, the air we breathe, and the water we drink are the among the most contaminated investments this world has ever attracted.

Perhaps our ”bean counters”, our “economic development gurus”, and our “industrialist” need an education. This series has a great reading list for them (and for me as well).

1. The Epic of Gilgamesh
2. My Name is Red
3. The Odyssey
4. The Bacchae
5. The Bhagavad Gita
6. The Tale of Genji
7. Journey to the West
8. Popol Vuh
9. Candide
10. Things Fall Apart
11. One Hundred Years of Solitude
12. The God of Small Things
13. The Thousand and One Nights

Thomas Reading List, What I am Looking at

Anthropologist Wade Davis, author of “The Wayfinders,” makes the case that the traditional cultures which are being crushed and annihilated by modernity are in fact repositories of human knowledge that we’re fools to discard.

Thomas Ways of Seeing

via [ movements.org ] “How To Be an Effective Dissident”

Hillary Clinton and the U.S. State Department mainstreaming youth dissident culture -

[ Promo ]

I wonder if we could use this network for a campaign against the Tar Sands?

Thomas Information Graphics, Misc, Politics

[ Studio Gang ]

Recent Work:

• Aqua Tower in Chicago
• Lincoln Park South Pond
• Ford Calumet Environmental Center
• Northerly Island

Studio Gang from GOOD: Edge of Progress on Vimeo.

Thomas Architecture

via [ GOOD ]

Thomas Information Graphics

via [ Jameyer's Photostream ] The photostream is well worth a look.
Health Care Costs as a percent of GDP vs Year with US Presidential Terms

Thomas Information Graphics