Friday, November 6, 2009

11.6.09

Did: -collected & cut up plastic pieces (2-3hrs)
-contacted Rec Sports directors & looked up how much it costs to rent scuba tanks (1/2 hr)
-searched for more underwater photographers and potential grant opportunites (1.5 hrs)
-scanned important pages of Good Magazine's the Water Issue (1/2 hr)
-organized research into two main categories and listed quotes/research under those categories (1.5 hrs)
-photographed at the pool again (2 hrs)
-edited photos (1 hr)
-fell asleep in my studio (1 hr)

Discovered/accomplished: I think organizing my research was a really good step for me this week (look at the last 2 blog posts). It helped me rearrange all of my crazy thoughts surrounding what I am actually doing. I like the idea of viewing the plastic particles as "organisms". It actually makes sense the more you read about plastic in the environment... plus there has been more than one occasion where people have commented saying that the sculptures I am making look alive, they move like they are alive, some of them look like kelp/seaweed, they remind people of microscopic cells or bacteria...etc. I think the photographs this week were also really interesting. I am not sure yet whether people should be a part of my photographs, but I think the images I made this week are interesting. I would be interested to hear how people respond to them...

Do: After talking with Hannah, she suggested I try and contact professors/administrators here at U of M who may be working in areas relating to oceanography. They may have more information to give me about the problem, but they also may have underwater photography equipment that I could tap into... that would be amazing... I also need to see if I hear back about the possibility of reserving a pool to use for a larger scale installation. I want to keep adding to my list of quotes (2 posts ago) so that I have a wider variety of sources. I need to keep making. If I want to relate the scale of this problem I need a LOT of plastic.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Courtney- Did you see this?

    http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/11/09/science/11102009_Garbage_index.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. Courtney,

    Sounds like you had a busy week! Great. The photographs that you took this week have a completely different feel to them than the ones that you took at your last shoot. I think that including people may not be the way to go for this. You are exploring the pollution that people create and how it affects nature and animals. Eventually humans will also be affected, but since we are not yet, we (as a whole) do not recognize this as being as huge of a problem as it is. The photos that you took emphasize the impact on a human, yet this sort of detritus more often obstructs the life of aquatic animals. There is some disconnect there.
    That being said, I am really glad that you are taking the initiative to try different ways of exploring this idea. Keep up the good work.

    Erica

    ReplyDelete
  3. Courtney,
    I am inclined to agree with Erica -- both about the value of exploring widely and the different, not entirely successful, feel of the images this week. I am not sure if it is the inclusion of a human per se, but it feels to me like you are telling us a story with an obvious moral. I wonder if you can create images that are more evocative and open (less directly narrative?) that lead us to make the same conclusions ourselves.
    Hannah

    ReplyDelete