Project 1: Simple Data

Stimulus Clinic

Senate prescribes $1 Trillion stimulus

by Francesco Lazzarino (Franco Fazuku)
February 12, 2009
SLURL

Summary

The diorama represents the $1 Trillion amount of the provisional stimulus package circa February 3, 2009.

News Source

Additions by Senate Push Stimulus Near $1 Trillion By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN Published: February 4, 2009

Video Documentary

Interaction

The clipboard launches this blog page when touched. There are no interactive animations for this diorama. I would like to have animated the plunger drawing liquid out from the bottle but I could not figure out how to move the liquid volumes (in syringe and bottle) with respect to the plunger movement while keeping position invariance.

Motivation

I wanted to demonstrate the therapeutic intentions of the pending economic stimulus package. I was somewhat motivated to cynically play the medication metaphor as drug abuse not as therapeutic, but went with the therapeutic angle. I believe the two options I gave myself represent the current cultural dichotomy of opinion of the stimulus package. Classical economists might view it as giving heroin to a junkie, while a Keynesian point of view would consider it necessary.

Description

Administration of medicated stimulants to the US holds a connotative meaning that the US economy is depressing. The patient in the scene is represented as a sculpture of the lower forty-eight United States. The colors red and blue are taken from the american flag as an additional symbol of the USA. The bloated nature of the sculpture represents the inflated and troubled or metaphorically speaking sick or depressed US economy. The money value is represented by a volume of green liquid in the syringe. The syringe has a measure on its cylinder that reads in $100 billion increments. The bottle contains the same green liquid as the syringe, representing the source of the money. The stage of the diorama is mean to resemble a sterile hospital room. The medical chart/prescription serves as the sign for the project. It follows the medical treatment metaphor.