Crafting with Waste: From Trash to Treasure
Product: The Bottle Bass
Drawing attention to plastic pollution across our global oceans through rethinking the value and potential of discarded materials.
Ongoing Process Documentation & Musical Score
Project Brief
Undertake an iterative design process crafting a functional music instrument out of discarded materials. In the process, research the sonic, ergonomic, and aesthetic potential of different waste materials, documenting these explorations. Develop and refine the musical instrument, taking a wide range of considerations into account, make a 1-2 page musical score in relation to your instrument, and create a 30 sec – 2 min video of the final product.
Initial Thoughts
I really enjoy thinking about how to give things a second (or third) life. I have spent a lot of time thinking about especially food waste and how we could repurpose some common and very useful food scraps (e.g. avocado peels) into alternatives for materials that traditionally are harmful to source/produce or work with (e.g. leather). As such this project is very exciting to me in concept but simultaneously due to its time frame and multiple deliverables feels daunting, particularly the thought of producing a promotional video for the finished instrument, as video is not a strength of mine.
One of the transferrable learnings from my last project was to be even more strict with my time. Looking at my calendar & commitments, I realistically have a maximum of 16 hours to dedicate to this project including 9 hours of studio time, across the next 9 days. Of these, I am estimating that I will require 3 hours to craft the promotional video, another 2 hours to create the score sheet, 2 hours to write up the ongoing process documentation and reflection, leaving 7 hours for material experimentation and iteratively crafting the instrument, which I will tentatively split 3:4. I think this will give me enough time to experiment with a broad range of materials and ideas while still allowing me to be on track to complete the instrument on time with multiple iterations.
Brainstorm
My first thought turning trash into something useful and valued, is the issue of ocean plastic and our approach to discarding materials. We rarely pause to think about the value something could bring beyond the purpose it was specifically designed for, causing us to throw out tons of potentially useful items. Many of these make their way into our oceans where they harm the marine life, and in turn, human life through the consumption of seafood. I want to use this project to draw attention to the issue of plastic pollution and inspire a different way of thinking about waste.
Framing my approach, the first question that comes to mind is “what is considered an instrument?” What about a “good” instrument? Is it about the instrument itself, or can a great musician make something good of any instrument put in front of them? How do you even define “good” when it comes to art, as it is arguably subjective? I don’t think that this project (or any project for that matter) will necessarily answer the above questions, but to create parameters for my iterations and self-critique, the below points from our first studio on this topic provide a useful starting point.