The World as We'll Know it

For my project (taking “world problem” into consideration), I chose to graffiti an image (or try to, anyway) that would illustrate one of the many effects of global warming. To do this I chose to graffiti something rather simple and something that almost all of us are familiar with: a flat map of the world. At first glance, the drawing might seem like a drawing of the world done by a four year old who cannot draw right. However, what’s supposed to come to mind is what the world – or what’s left of it anyway – is supposedly going to look like after global warming’s worst case scenario takes place.

I started off tracing a map of the world on a box of cereal just most of us did with an

x-acto knife. After I made my stencil of the actual continents, I distorted (as well as deleted) some of the continents to show how they could possibly look if Antarctica as a continent (as well as all other ice burgs of the world) melted and if the sea level rose dramatically (as many Scientists now say is happening and will continue to happen) as a result or effect of warming temperatures. The graffiti is far from an exact or accurate image, but that’s one of the points – no one really knows what the heck is going to happen or what it is going to look like. So I took it upon myself to imagine what the world (via flat map) and its continents would look like if what Scientists say what’s going to happen actually happens. I mean obviously I’m not a Scientist or anything but to be fair Scientists aren’t psychic.

So, the finished graffiti drawing is a silver painted stencil of the earth in the year on a blue background. I chose to have text on this stencil because I did distort the original image. Also, like I said earlier, someone could just look at this stencil and think a four year old tried to copy a map. I hope “2070” clarified my stencil and the meaning behind it a little more than just the distorted image of the world would alone. Having a stencil include just “2070” is still vary vague however I did not want something too apparent because ideally I would want someone to look at this and have to think at least a few seconds (or minutes) to get the global warming message. Preferably I would like a person to see it and at first be like “What does that person not know how to use a pencil?” and then a few seconds later say to themselves (however out loud) “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh”. As far as the location of my stencil’s final outcome, I would say that is on a billboard located on a highway that’s remotely in the middle of no-where (say the I-57, for example). A highway like this would be perfect because all you see around when you are driving on the 57 (for a big part anyway on the drive from Chicago to Champaign) are fields of corn or other crops. A distorted image of the world (in a place that seems so flat for the moment) with a crazy-far-away year (with a prediction attached to it) on the bottom of it in the middle of no where sparks curiosity and thought – it has to (what else are we supposed to do when we’re driving for so long on a road like that?)!

The stencil of the world does not include Antartica, about 25 percent of South America (it was stenciled to scale), the northern part of Canada, Iceland, Greenland, a huge part of Russia and Asia (mostly China), the Indian subcontinent, most of the Pacific islands, and most of Australia and New Zealand.

Oh, another note is the text on my project has “zero’s” that are split in the middle. I chose this specifically to get the whole the “world is drowning” across even more.