Pre-thesis project. 30 Aug-30 Nov 2022
Group member: Brianna Butler
Designing a new interaction with water – Working with institutions to realize the impact of microplastics in water through visual interventions
Personal consumption practices have begun to be a major focus as climate change and environmental forces are now at a critical breaking point. Here we highlight how clothing impacts water systems and ultimately our health and wellbeing through the direct choice to buy, wear, and wash synthetic clothing. What seems like a benign act is really a vehicle for the breakdown of smaller plastic pieces, which are entering our water system. These tiny particles often cannot be filtered out by normal water treatment processes. They are ending up in every locality and atmosphere on Earth.
By creating visual interventions, we aimed to provoke a greater awareness around what people buy and how they do laundry. These visuals were created to evoke emotions and shock people into realizing the high levels of plastic we are surrounded by and also provoke a new way of thinking. We also proposed proactive steps for individuals and organizations like our partners: The City of Gothenburg and Mimbly (a tech laundry company) to take, in order to curb some of this particle contamination.
The outcome of the project resulted in more design interventions:
*an interventionary programming in shared laundry rooms apartments in different partds of the city of Gothenburg, collaborating with SGS, a renting company for student apartments.
Part of the programming implemented in the SGS shared laundry rooms was used at an event in collaboration with Mimbly as well. Here more than 30 people interacted with our designed posters, the fine art piece and the sensorial experience that we created.
*a sensorial experience as a different way of visualizing microplastics in water and our blood and a final art piece which was used as speculation to bring in the presence of plastic in synthetic clothes, evoking emotions and a new way of thinking.
After the event we got the understanding that most of the people didn’t know all the facts we presented, and that they were curious to find out what they can do differently. Therefore, we compiled more information for things that people could do in order to take an active role in their exposure and lessening the impact they have on water in the form of a booklet that I have designed.
For the exhibition the booklet was printed out, but the digital pages could be used on their own for social media awareness. The ultimate end use of the pages was to be used by Mimbly and the City of Gothenburg social media platforms. Here are some extracts from the pages:
*a guerilla marketing campaign by going into stores and spreading stickers with facts about microplastics on clothing tags – with this method we could not quantify the impact.
