Project Surplus Plus
Our society strives to alienate us from the reality of our consumption habits by keeping our waste out of sight. For my Senior Thesis, I wanted to discover what would happen if we reintroduced the complexities of waste back into our lives.
Process
What once began as a calculated project to measure the impact of my daily choices on the rest of the world, gradually transformed into an intimate, philosophical exploration of my waste habits.
For five months, I restored my personal relationship with my disposables by keeping and documenting them. Not only has this process changed my perception, but I have also found that those around me have become more aware of their waste habits as well.
This installation gave me the opportunity to continue changing others' perceptions of their daily impact by communicating my waste-collecting experience.
Engagement
Throughout the project, I utilized social media and blogs to document and share my process.
In retrospect, what I find particularly interesting about this project is that I intuitively used blogs and social media for my project long before it was mainstream. And look at the social landscape now: having a social media team for your company is now a crucial part of reaching out to your audience/customers.
The Experience
For the exhibit, I built an intimate space to to envelop the audience in my trash, and engineered three media stations where he or she could press a button to listen to commentary through headphones.
