Water coolers filled with plastic are the focus of an art installation created to celebrate World Oceans Month at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. The Plastic Century exhibit is a collaborative project exploring the relationship between people, oceans and plastic.
Designed by artists Sarah Kornfeld, Stuart Candy, Jake Dunagan, and oceanographer Wallace J. Nichols, Plastic Century contains four water coolers filled with plastic and representing a specific snapshot in time from 1910 to 2030. Each cooler contains an amount of plastic that is indexed to the cumulative total produced on the planet so far.
Starting in 1910, the birth year of Jacques-Yves Cousteau, approximately 60 million tons of plastics were made. By 1960 it was 600 million tons, 6 billion in 2010 (almost 1 ton for every human being) and production is predicted to reach 12.5 billion tons by 2030.
“Plastic Century is a hybrid science, art and futures project, created to make visible a phenomenon so widespread that it has become virtually invisible,” explain the artists. “The production of plastics has increased exponentially over the last century. Plastic is now literally everywhere.”
Visit: http://www.plasticcentury.com/
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