BUILT TO LAST

project proposal & proof of concept

The future is plastic.

• A disposable/throwaway culture

• Planned obsolescence

• Our relationships with the objects around us

• The rise of a material, object-centric culture

The plastisphere• The scale of marine pollution from plastic debris

• Microplastics: Plastic doesn’t decompose - it breaks

down into smaller and smaller pieces

• Pacific Ocean Garbage Vortex / The Five Gyres

Why it matters.

• Breakdown of plastic into hazardous materials

• Plastic acts as a “ship” carrying invasive species over

long distances

• Plastic enters the food chain and ends up on our

plates.

My questions

• What does it mean to live in a material culture,

an object-centric culture?

• Why do we cherish some physical objects

(“our most prized possessions”) and feel

perfectly fine throwing others away?

• Amnesia surrounding single-use plastics?

The aims

I want to challenge cultural notions of

disposability and place its impacts into a global

context.

I want to encourage participants/viewers to

examine their own relationships with the physical

objects in their lives. I want them to think about

the things they love - and the things they throw

away.

The project

My project will be an archive of 3D images of my

trash. I will collect all the plastic I throw away over a

period of time and create an online archive of each

item, using photogammetry to make 3D portraits of

the objects.

Using Unity, 360 video/photography, and audio, I will

locate these piece of trash in different environments/

landscapes (the beach, the ocean, a banquet, a

disposal heap).

Using photogammetry to create a 3d portrait of trash.

Alejandro Duran

Washed Up: Transforming a Trashed Landscape

Gregg Segal

“Segal decided to

photograph family, friends,

neighbors and anyone

else willing posing with a

week's worth of their

accumulated trash. He

instructed his

photographic subjects to

save everything—from

banana peels to

recyclables—and to bring

it over to his house at the

end of the week.”

Mary Mattingly, OWN-IT.US

Natalia Cabrera Figueroa, Trashland

Getting there

• Experts: 5Gyres, field researchers

• Survey of peers

Sketches

When we try to pick out anything by

itself we find that it is bound fast by a

thousand invisible cords that cannot be

broken, to everything in the universe.

- John Muir

Questions?