Wikianswers says that the average respiration rate for a person at rest is about 16 breaths per minute, so if a person lives to the age of 80, they will take approximately 600 million breaths in their lifetime. Do you feel any different for knowing this piece of information?
It could be said that trying to measure or quantify something about the natural world – say the number of stars in the night sky – can turn it from art to science, from the mysterious to the mundane. We breathe from the moment we are born to the moment we die, but unlike the incremental accounting of birthdays or accomplishments – creative, familial, political, financial – breathing is not something we think of measuring, often not something we even notice. Thought about this way, holding your breath becomes a hiatus in living.
Several_Interruptions, which collages together online videos in which people are seen holding their breath underwater, is both interruption (as its name suggests) as well as documentary, in which the seemingly mundane and numerous has been made back into something unique and original.
