Waste to Work: Anxiety Map

Waste to Work: Anxiety Map
Exhibited at Pratt Manhattan Gallery in You Are Here curated by Kitty Harmon

This is a depiction of the power of distilled anxiety, an emotional outcome of the economic downturn of recent years. It also represents a dichotomy within the physiology of the body. We sweat when we are working and we sweat when we are anxious. What about sweating when we are anxious about not working? The exhibit uses the by-product of anxiety – sweat – to portray anxiety levels in New York City. The City is divided into its 261 zip codes, each represented by a glass jar. Using data collected from the New York State Labor Department, each jar is filled with sweat in relation to the unemployment rate in those zip codes. The jars are then turned into “sweat battery” cells that power LED lights on a map of the five burrows. The location of the LEDs correlates with the location of people who are unemployed, or “had their lights turned off”. Sweat, the by-product of anxiety, becomes the power for this illustration.

2010 Unemployment Rate for Each of the Five Burroughs of New York City
Bronx 12.7%
Brooklyn 10.3%
Staten Island 8.7%
Queens 8.6%
Manhattan 7.9%