Endangered Animal

Brief

This assignment is about finding new purposes for artificial things that have become ‘waste’, and using them to create new things that get people to think about the relation between the things we make or design, and their impact on our planet, its natural ecosystems, and the nonhuman world, i.e. the world of animals, plants, microbes and other beings. This assignment is also about looking at things around us as a source of inspiration, especially taking a look at our waste from a different perspective and through a different lens and hopefully instill or support a practice of upcycling and re-use. 

We would like you to choose an animal species that is endangered and under threat, and design and prototype a bust or model of it using the recycled materials that you’ve been collecting so far. You can use any tools or materials to cut, saw, twist, reshape, mold, glue, attach any combination of recycled materials to create your animal. You can design a model of the entire animal or just a part of it, but please make sure that it is identifiable as the animal you’ve chosen. You can also use this opportunity to make your own building materials like making your own clay, dough, glue, modeling paste etc. 

Lastly, for this week, we would like you to upload pictures of your model from several angles, as well as any sketches, blueprints, experiments that you may have executed as part of your process, to your blog, and write a post reflecting on your process, as well as providing us with some synthesized information on the animal you chose and how it became endangered, as well as what you recycled to create your model, and how some of that ‘junk’ is contributing to ecological and ecosystemic destruction. We really look forward to seeing your creatures! 

Tasks

1. Collect and save whatever interesting waste or recycled materials you can to use as prototyping materials for this project.
2. Choose an endangered animal and do some research on it and how it lives in, what its livelihood depends on, its ecosystem and the current threats it’s facing.
3. Sketch and design, and then construct, your animal using the recycled materials you have been collecting, and any other materials/tools you have access to and are interested in using. Experiment!
4. Take photos of your creation from multiple angles and upload them together with your sketches and designs to your process blog. Please share about your process, some interesting pieces of information about the animal you chose as well as the nature of the junk that you’ve chosen to use to make your artifact.

GRADING CRITERIA

These are a few general criteria to keep in mind for grading:

• The quality of your research into the endangered animal you chose to pursue. How well informed you seem to be on the animal, how well you have synthesized the information you have absorbed and how clearly you were able to share your findings. 
• How thoroughly and creatively you’ve explored, through sketches, initial maquettes or blueprints etc. the design of the model for your animal. 
• How well you were able to organize, plan and translate your designs and creative process into the final model through your choice of prototyping techniques and experiments. 
• The quality of reflection and documentation. How in-depth you were able to document the process and the depth of your reflection on your process, captured on your blog.

This assignment accounts for 5% of your final grade for the course.