Week 7: How Does Art Inspire Changes

Welcome back to my blog.

This week I covered how art is used to inspire others to become aware or involved in ocean cleanups. Art has a way of providing a more visual perspective of a concept which can reach out to someone in a more meaningful way than simply saying it with words. The video “if you give a beach a plastic bottle” proves this point. In this video, the artist is participating in a beach clean up on Kayak Island in Alaska, but also making watercolor paintings out of the various landscapes and scenery as if there wasn’t anything wrong on the land nor water. Later in the video, the artist tore his paintings in half and placed them all into a larger painting, almost like a jigsaw puzzle, making a plastic bottle in the middle surrounded by each painting’s scenery. The message that I took away from the video is that if there is even one piece of plastic left behind, it’s just going to lead to more pieces of plastic to be brought in and washed up on the beaches. Moreover, a key point made in the video is that the amount of plastic that gets into the ocean is exponentially larger than the amount of plastic that is removed.

In another video “Gyre: Creating Art From a Plastic Ocean”, continues to prove art can inspire people to get involved in ocean cleanups. In the video, the narrator organizes a program in Alaska where their goal is to remove as much plastic as possible to prevent other animals from eating it or getting tangled and to raise awareness and create art from the trash. Some of the artists in the video take photos of the landscapes and oceans but place a piece of plastic as if it’s like a UFO or foreign object in an unknown environment.

Both videos help prove how art can inspire others to join in cleaning up the ocean even though it’s going to be a slow and long process, the art still remains and can always be used to constantly bring motivation. Something I’m going to be working on next week is how videos and visual depictions can support this matter.

Until next week.