Step One: Mock-ups in New York

Before I am confronted with a landfill full of materials for art in Dawson City, I practiced with some New York City trash. This piece is made with discarded wallpaper.

Introduction

This blog is to document the process of the a currently untitled eco-art-research experimental design project in Dawson City in the Yukon Territory, Canada. This experimental investigation considers the design, aesthetics and contextual elements that influence the value of trash and behaviors towards trash in Dawson City.

The focus of the project is to build an artistic walk-in, interactive, sculptural diorama mimicking the local landscape whose raw materials consist entirely of garbage from Dawson City's landfill. The diorama will be modular and will be available to gallery visitors take away for free. Both local residents and tourists will be encouraged to take parts of the installation home with them, enacting a landfill that slowly erodes into people's personal spaces as opposed to the usual circulation of garbage away from people and into landfills. The context of the gallery and the aesthetics or utility of the transformed garage will work to create value in discarded materials.

This project has a number of goals. Many current environmental debates focus on how to best promote environmental change- one possibility is to use technology, design, and science to change the material aspects of environmental problems, while a second popular argument focuses on changing personal and institutional behaviors towards the material environment. By creating a case study where an aesthetic, material "fix" (via the transformation of garbage) is based on behaviors of consumers towards pre- and post- transformation trash engages both the role of voluntary participation and the role of technology and material goods in ecological stewardship.