"Every 400 milliseconds a new human being is born," writes artist Stefano D'alessio, succintly summarizing the problem facing the 10.9 billion people projected to be living on Earth by 2050, consuming its resources 3x faster than the planet can handle. His collaborative installation with Martina Menegon, >70000000000, visualizes the claustrophobic consequences of overpopulation as tiny projection-mapped humans begin to fill up the screen, endlessly bumping into each other as they each fight for their own space—a simple but powerful metaphor for some of the negative side effects of an overpopulated planet.
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The duo also offers a simple solution. Open the doors stationed below the installation and the crowd floods out of the frame, presumably to Mars or Keplers-438b -442b. Seeing the rate at which humans are filling up the planet with your own eyes, and hearing an accompanying "pop" every time they do so is as good of an argument for space colonization as we've ever seen in three minutes.
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