Waste
For one of my classes, my professor asked us to collect our trash for two weeks. The assignment gave me a clear sight of how much I waste. It got me thinking about myself as a designer, and how I don't want to create something that will end up in a landfill everyday. Instead, I will be more mindful of our planet and only produce things with plenty of thought and care.
With bags of trash piling up in our rooms, we were then tasked with visually displaying our waste for two weeks and a projection of our waste over a year. After brainstorming a number of different ways to approach the assignment, I landed on an idea I felt would be effective. I decided that rather than showing more an more trash piling up, I would communicate the numbers by deconstructing my most commonly thrown away items. The number of pieces would represent the number of times that item is thrown away.
Here are some initial attempts at the concept.
Here is the final assignment along with a short explanation.
Collecting my trash for two weeks not only showed me the sheer volume of my waste, but also the wide variety. I found just how much of what I use in my daily life is temporary. To demonstrate the quantity and assortment of these fleeting objects, I constructed four scenes displaying my most common trash. Each series begins with a presentation of the items I use on a near-daily basis. I cut up each item with the number of pieces used to denote the number of times I throw it away in a two-week span. I then deconstructed the items further, this time with the number of pieces relating to the number of times I throw them away in an entire year. Each series follows this pattern with the exception of my toiletries. Since I do not use any of these items entirely within two weeks, I only showed the divisions for a year. Using division rather than multiplication allowed for me to exemplify the numeration of my trash without overwhelming my viewer.