ARTIST HIGHLIGHTS THE SCOURGE OF PLASTIC POLLUTION

Plastic pollution is one of the most crucial issues the planet is facing. However, many people don’t take it seriously, thinking that plastic is recyclable. The fact is we can’t store, maintain or recycle all our stuff and plastic that isn’t recycled gets partially washed into the ocean.

Larger pieces of plastic break up in the water, becoming uncountable small shards and fragments of microplastic throughout the ocean, passing through animals and plants, or water itself, and into us.

Plastic Sea is an interactive installation by Witaya Junma who comes up with a unique way to get viewers to realise that all of us are actually contributing to the issue one way or another. It’s running at CU Art 4C, next to Samyan Mitrtown, Rama IV Road, until Sunday.

A project under Faamai Digital Arts Hub at the Faculty of Fine and Applied Art, Chulalongkorn University, the exhibition aims to raise awareness about environmental issues and the decadent use of plastic. It has been curated and fabricated in a way that doesn’t create more non-biodegradable waste in the process.

As a pioneering Thai new media artist who has been working using a combination of interactive installations and data visualisation for years, Witaya uses a database provided by the Department Of Marine And Coastal Resources to present the growing volume of plastic waste in the sea surrounding Thailand, which ranked as the seventh biggest marine polluter in 2019.

Visitors can interact by putting a capsule of plastic waste in a water tank. Each capsule has a different form of plastic found in everyday life as well as in the ocean. When a capsule of plastic waste is dropped into the tank, the water begins to move and flow, creating a whirlpool. The stronger the whirlpool, the greater the volume of that plastic waste in the sea.

While the whirlpool swirls, two numbers are shown on the work — one is the percentage of that type of plastic in the sea and the other is the year which that data was collected.

Each viewing session is 30 minutes long, starting at 10.30am. The last session begins at 5pm. Only six visitors are allowed at a time. Advance appointment is required by sending an email to contact.cuart4c@gmail.com.