We took a creative approach in crafting our artistic statement. It is the type of artistic statement you’d read on a placard next to the art installation itself. Our documentation contains the technical details.
Decentralized Cradle to Cradle
Dear friend,
In writing this, we are hoping to take you through our process and realization of our product. Not everything we planned along the way lays in front of you on the installation so in some ways this statement goes farther in communicating our statement than the installation itself.
Some of us on this little precious bubble are still adamant about drinking from the potable tap water on campus. We opt to purchase plastic bottles instead. Some of us were deeply upset when small water bottles were banned. Some of us cheered. We think our comfort in using disposable-synthetic-polluting-harmful-poisonous materials comes from the distance between our decisions and its impact. The water bottles we purchase are quickly whisked away never to be seen again by us. Its impacts are distant. We feel as if we are just drinking just this one plastic bottle. The aggregate scale of our consumption doesn’t really hit us.
A struggling university administration fearing both its members’ love for disposable synthetics and its impact on the environment commissioned us to design a new type of water bottle. A water bottle with one changed feature — the lining of the water is made from tiny water bottles themselves. The administration wishes to contrast and alert that the single water bottle consumption at a given point in time is not so single viewed across time. This new product challenges the user by asking them to drink with a bottle made from multiple bottles itself. While we did not pursue this path for our final installation we wish for you to see the product we designed.
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Our project was a grapple between using art as a medium of activism (the bottle of bottles) or acting out the future of plastic we see – the cradle to cradle thinking. The synthetic technical nutrients we have produced have pulled humanity back in the long-term boasting short term boosts. We could still live in abundance but with great design at a large scale. Actors across firms and sectors would need to collaborate to salvage every drop of energy and not let any of it escape to our air, oceans. These actors would need to coordinate to close their proximity. Until they do so, we find ourselves trapped at their mercy.
The installation you see before you is our statement against this trend. The cradle to cradle thinking can be hacked at any part of the pathway. It can be decentralized to its communities. We attempt to go through this decentralized journey within the context of our NYU Abu Dhabi community.
Not sure if you know dear friend but at NYUAD, we have started handling food waste in some form and started making compost from it. We also know that you would very much like to keep plants in your rooms. Our journey to decentralize the upcycling process thus led us to making you this pot planter. We used THE plastic bottles you threw away to make this planter for you. We used THE food you threw away to make the soil for you. We shredded it, melted it, cast it, mixed it, planted it and put it here in front of you.
Decentralizing the process doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen at scale. In fact to the contrary – we think it should scale. The installation you see before you is made with casting molds that can be used to create as many products as possible for the community. Decentralizing the process doesn’t denominate down to the individual level – it involves working as a community. Two members of the community working to make these products has a much larger impact than hoping and dreaming every individual does so.
Let’s hack, dear friend. Let’s upcycle.
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