Seventh Generation
Installation • 2002 • Designer
'A sustainable activity is one that you believe you can continue indefinitely into the future...or at least for seven generations.'*
Overview
Over the course of one year, our environment is flooded with more toxic waste than it can handle. Seventh Generation examines what happens when the very system essential for our survival is not supported.
As a baby wails and squirms in an enclosed ecosystem, pollution statistics are processed and used to control the flow and frequency of waste being pumped into her environment. The pollutants include those of a liquid variety (directed through electronic pumps) and those of a gaseous variety (produced with a fog machine). When a user touches the human handprint on the front of the installation, the baby is temporarily calmed. Fans mounted within the installation drain the 'air pollution' from the environment toward the user - revealing the baby's wasteland and allowing users to sooth the infant at the cost of their own airspace. As the user leaves the installation, however, the pollution once again begins to fill the environment - continuing the steady process of accumulation and destruction.
'A sustainable activity is one that you believe you can continue indefinitely into the future...or at least for seven generations.'*
Overview
Over the course of one year, our environment is flooded with more toxic waste than it can handle. Seventh Generation examines what happens when the very system essential for our survival is not supported.
As a baby wails and squirms in an enclosed ecosystem, pollution statistics are processed and used to control the flow and frequency of waste being pumped into her environment. The pollutants include those of a liquid variety (directed through electronic pumps) and those of a gaseous variety (produced with a fog machine). When a user touches the human handprint on the front of the installation, the baby is temporarily calmed. Fans mounted within the installation drain the 'air pollution' from the environment toward the user - revealing the baby's wasteland and allowing users to sooth the infant at the cost of their own airspace. As the user leaves the installation, however, the pollution once again begins to fill the environment - continuing the steady process of accumulation and destruction.
TechnologySeventh Generation uses a condensed scale of time (12 hours = 1 year) in order to visualize the way in which pollution effects (and eventually destroys) our world. By touching the human hand print, the user becomes connected to (and perhaps implicated in) the creation of this toxic waste dump, and although the infant inside may be soothed by the presence of another living creature - the environment around her cannot be saved without constant vigilance. The pollution baby is treated the same way many industrialized societies treat the earth, and the metaphor of the child extends to the disfunctional legacy we are leaving our children. Eventually, the pollutants being pumped very consciously into this microcosm physically break down the baby, the electronics keeping the system operational, and the very installation itself.
* John Cairns, Jr., "Defining Goals and Conditions for a Sustainable World," ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH PERSPECTIVES Vol. 105, No. 11 (November 1997), pgs. 1164-1170.