Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont Pomona Senior Theses Pomona Student Scholarship 2019 Fragile Oceans, Synthetic Flotsam and Microbial Collaboration – Explorations in the Visual Communication of the Plastic Crisis Ivan Langesfeld Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_theses Part of the Biology Commons, Communication Technology and New Media Commons, Environmental Studies Commons, and the Interdisciplinary Arts and Media Commons Recommended Citation Langesfeld, Ivan, "Fragile Oceans, Synthetic Flotsam and Microbial Collaboration – Explorations in the Visual Communication of the Plastic Crisis" (2019). Pomona Senior Theses. 210. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_theses/210 This Open Access Senior Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Pomona Student Scholarship at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in Pomona Senior Theses by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Fragile Oceans, Synthetic Flotsam and Microbial Collaboration – Explorations in the Visual Communication of the Plastic Crisis Iván Langesfeld In partial fulfillment of a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Environmental Analysis Dec 2019 Pomona College Readers: Professor Char Miller Professor Nina Karnovsky Table of Contents Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 4 - 5 Introduction 6 - 12 Personal Interest 13 - 17 Methodology 18 - 23 Artist Statement 24 - 27 Photo Series 29 – 37 Obstructed Vision 29 Drown the sorrows... 30 Our children’s future — Cries unheeded 31 Who writes the future? 32 Plastic buys plastic 33 Message in a bottle 34 What’s for dinner? 35 Flush - Ocean gyres photo series 36 - 37 Future Directions 38 Appendix 39 - 40 References 41 - 42 2 Abstract Scientific evidence that the ocean plastic crisis is larger in scale and more sinister than previously thought continues to mount, but the rate of plastic production is only rising. What will it take to decisively turn the tide against plastic? We need scientists, politicians, and industry changemakers to continue producing knowledge and positive change in the industry, but we need to go further still. This thesis explores art as an alternative visual communication strategy with the capacity to encourage curiosity, empathy, and positive engagement with the issue of ocean plastics. The series of work explores bacterial bioluminescence as an artistic medium in juxtaposition with objects of found ocean plastic. The photographs in the series build on the concepts of mutualism, illumination, critical densities, and interspecies communication to reimagine how we might further the discourse around ocean plastic. 3 Acknowledgements None of this work would have been possible without my symbiont-collaborator, Vibrio fischeri, whose light took on several new layers of meaning over the course of the project. My awe and gratitude for the phenomenon of bioluminescence endures. On the human side of things, I would first and foremost like to thank Professor Char Miller for his support and mentorship throughout my time at Pomona. As my professor, academic advisor, and now thesis reader, you have taken on a role greater than necessary by aiming to not only support, mentor, and teach, but also encourage and facilitate the development of my ideas, aspirations, and character. Thank you! I count myself lucky to be part of the Environmental Analysis Department and would like to thank the Department for its willingness to support and foster creative, transdisciplinary interests and projects such as this. The financial support for this project is incredibly appreciated. In the Biology Department, I would like to give my sincere thanks to Professor Nina Karnovsky for her feedback as a reader and for introducing me to contacts that would end up being critical for the project. I am indebted to Professor Jonathan Moore, whose generosity with time and lab space has been critical as I undertook learning how to work with bacteria. My thanks to Katherine Stephens for her assistance with lab safety training as well. A big thank you is due to the Surfrider Foundation at Huntington Beach, CA for their enthusiastic support in helping me acquire the plastic I needed for this project, and specifically to Shane Coons who helped coordinate the harbor cleanup on October 6th 2019. Thank you to all the participants of that cleanup who helped gather the majority of the plastic material I have been working with since. In the Art Department, I would like to thank Professor Lisa Auerbach for her generosity with camera equipment and her guidance with the photographic aspect of the project. In the art world more broadly, there are several artists who I would like to thank for their influence in the development of my idea for this project. A thank you to alumnus James Turrell, whose “Dividing the Light” Skyspace on campus, Roden Crater project, and broader body of work got me thinking about the emotive capacity of light and its ability to frame and convey meaning as an artistic medium itself. Thank you to Tomás Saraceno, whose exhibit “On Air,” at the Palais de Tokio illuminated art’s power to draw speculative worlds into reality by way of interspecies collaboration, sensory entanglement, and transdisciplinary understandings. Thank you to Olafur Eliasson for demonstrating to me that perception and the embodied experience of art can be used to encourage the public’s engagement with large societal issues. My warmest thank you to Lee Pivnik for inviting me to participate in the opening of “A Love That Bears No Fruit” at Biosphere 2 and believing in my glowing, bacteria-fueled aspirations from the start. To Captain Charles Moore, thank you for taking the time to meet with me to talk about ocean plastics and for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch samples. Without the work you have dedicated your life to we would be years behind in addressing this environmental crisis. 4 Last of all, I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Joshua Troll for his mentorship during one fateful summer on Santa Catalina Island. Your fascination with the Hawaiian bobtail squid and its bacterial “invisibility cloak” was contagious and got me thinking about science, light, and communication in new ways. 5 Introduction Although humans are a terrestrial species, we rely on the ocean for a large part of our diet, economies, and even the oxygen we breathe.1 Due to its immense volume, surface area, productive capacity, and its role in climate regulation, the health of the ocean is a critical component within the larger picture of planetary health. However, global environmental trends show stark and accelerating decreases across multiple indicators of ocean biome integrity including measures of biodiversity, suitable habitat, and minimum viable population sizes.2 Compared to terrestrial and atmospheric sciences, the ocean remains a surprisingly unexplored frontier whose sheer scale and difficulty to work in makes it challenging to quantify the compounding effects of our individual actions over time.3 In this light, ocean health appears to us as a rather abstract concept — hard to understand and empathize with and therefore all but impossible to address rapidly, effectively, or at scale. This complicates our ability to mitigate and eventually reverse the damage we are causing so that the continued deterioration of the ocean's health appears imminent if no drastic changes take place soon. Though climate change is likely the greatest long-term threat to the ocean, the problem of plastic pollution has recently received a lot of attention in the media and garnered the public's interest. It turns out that plastic is anything but inert, as was once thought. The Guardian reporter Stephen Buranyi explains that “we used to see [plastic] as litter – a nuisance but not a menace. That idea 1 “Why Should We Care about the Ocean?,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. n.d. 2 McQuatters-Gollop, Abigail, Ian Mitchell, Cristina Vina-Herbon, Jacob Bedford, Prue F.E. Addison, Christopher P. Lynam, P. N. Geetha, et al. “From Science to Evidence - How Biodiversity Indicators Can Be Used for Effective Marine Conservation Policy and Management.” Frontiers in Marine Science 6, no. Mar 2019. 3 “Oceans: The Great Unknown,” National Aeronautics and Space Administration. 2009. 6 has been undermined by the recent widespread acknowledgment that plastic is far more pervasive and sinister than most people had ever imagined.”4 We know that the world produces 300 million tons of plastic per year, 8 million tons of which end up in the oceans. 50% of these plastics are single-use, intended for disposal after their immediate utility is used.5 Since production began in the 1950’s, the total amount of plastic produced has surpassed 8.3 billion metric tons, or just over one ton of plastic for every person currently alive. Of this total amount, only 9% has ever been recycled, 12% has been incinerated, and the remaining 79% remains in landfills or circulates freely in the environment.6 You would hope that we would at least be slowing things down, but the rate of plastic production is only increasing, with production levels doubling every 11 years.7 Of course once produced, plastic takes hundreds to thousands of years to degrade, if at all. Though plastic does not degrade like most other materials, it does continually break down into smaller and smaller pieces called microplastics (any plastic piece smaller than 5 mm long), which can take both granular and fibrous forms. What does all this plastic mean for the ocean? Approximately 3-10% of all plastic produced ends up in the ocean, where the majority of it sinks (70%) and poses a threat to seabed life, but the remainder floats.8 In the ocean, what floats will travel and so the plastic that enters the ocean 4 Buranyi, Stephen. “The Plastic Backlash: What’s behind Our Sudden Rage – and Will It Make a Difference?” The Guardian, Nov 2018.