I stumbled on to this via an item in Tom Hoffman's Google Reader Shared Items list. I'm finding Shared Items to be one of my best sources of interesting items found on the web.
Of All The People In All The World (UK) uses grains of rice to bring formally abstract statisitcs to startling and powerful life.
Each grain of rice = one person and you are invited to compare the one grain that is you to the millions that are not. Over a period of days a team of performers carefully weigh out quantities of rice to represent a host of human statistics
- the populations of towns and cities - the number of doctors, the number of soldiers - the number of people born each day, the number who die - all the people who have walked on the moon - deaths in the holocaust.
The statistics are arranged in labelled piles creating an ever changing landscape of rice. The statistics and their juxtapositions can be moving, shocking, celebratory, witty and thought provoking. [From Stan's Cafe Theatre Company: Of All The People In All The World]