Number of ManufacturingIndustriesbyNumberof Product ClassesinanIndustry
by Morgan Rush Jones (2008)

Launch Project

NumberofManufacturingIndustriesbyNumberofProductClassesinanIndustry is difficult to look at. Not because the material is offensive or rude, but rather, because it increasingly challenges human perception. The background consists of several multi-colored gif animations, on top of which is bright yellow bold face text written down the left hand side of the browser window. Arranged in patterns, the background flashes on and off, as the eye strains to focus and read the text. The words waver between legibility and illegibility, depending on whether or not that particular letter falls on top of a darker or lighter area of the screen. If one can manage to read the text, some of the following phrases can be deciphered: “Rhetoric of Boredom…or maybe an overabundance of information…packing is really better than the thing…being afraid of disaster means listening and taking things in, internally.” The text resembles Jenny Holtzer’s use of run-on text with little to no punctuation, ongoing fragments of thoughts and incomplete sentences. The text’s lack of finitude mirrors the ongoing visual animations behind it, both metaphors for the tension between absorption and boredom experienced in a culture of endless mass-produced commoditities that the work takes its title from.