Nathan Bogin

To start off this artist statement I would like to begin with the environmental pillar of sustainability. Environmental stability is one of the pillars of sustainability since every other pillar affects the other .Without environmental sustainability, you can’t have social, or economic sustainability. This applies to every other pillar and goes both ways. Sustainability in the environment boils down to keeping the cycles running how they’re supposed to. In the environment everything moves in a cycle, and messing with it, leads to an unsustainable environment. An example of this would be the carbon cycle. Human beings have added countless amounts of excess carbon into the atmosphere which is making messing with the cycle, turning it unsustainable. Another example would be food webs. Food webs in themselves are a cycle, and us interfering by things such as over hunting interrupts this food web which ultimately dissolves the entire thing. Sustainability would be things like recycling, and decreasing carbon emissions, it’s the leave as little of a footprint as possible.
The way in which our world has become balanced is through evolution and natural selection. Human beings however has escaped these natural laws and are able to do as they wish. The environment is no longer an enemy, but through civilization it has become a second thought. This is why we can now influence and disrupt the natural cycles on our planet. Social and economic sustainability wouldn’t have ever existed if human beings hadn’t come up with it. The very existence of us, has caused so many problems and issues within our world that if we didn’t exist, most of this wouldn’t have happened. This doesn’t mean we should all kill ourselves, it means that we are RESPONSIBLE and should care about how we affect the world around us. It is our responsibility to uphold environmental, economic and social sustainability.
The topic that I chose is sustainability in the ocean environment. How this relates to my pillar of sustainability is self explanatory. The ocean is part of the environment, and sustaining it is a part of environmental sustainability making the two relate to one another. When it comes to the ocean, my issue focuses on pollutants in the ocean. Whether it be plastic or chemicals being dumped into our waters, my topic covers all of those aspects and issues. I chose it to be broad as it allows me to have as much freedom with the creation of my chime. I enjoy freedom, and I think that it allows me to be as creative as possible.
Ocean pollution and sustainability of our oceans is incredibly important. For one the ocean has many important functions. 70 percent of all oxygen is produced by organisms inside the ocean. Next would be that the ocean is a massive carbon sink, Then there’s the fact that it plays a massive factor in our weather system, as the ocean is what keeps our planet from burning up by absorbing most of the heat given to us from the sun. The ocean itself has so many complex functions which we need as our existence depends on it. This is why humans need to try and put as little impact on the ocean itself as it is such a crucial thing to us. The ocean shouldn’t be thought of as a garbage dump where we can just throw our wastes into it. It’s crucial to so many environmental processes as well as the animals which live within it. Messing with is by overfishing and filling it with pollutants shows that we do not care for it, because people do not yet know the impact which our decisions hold.
With my chime which I am creating I hope to bring awareness. I don’t believe the chime itself can make an immediate impact, but its purpose is to bring awareness to others and influence them to then act upon this issue. To sustain our ocean is to sustain our life, as it is so crucial to our existence and all of life's existence on this planet, that it should concern every human. By looking at my chime it should spark curiosity, and want to delve deeper into the subject. Like previously stated, awareness.
The materials for my chime are vast, for one metal and plastic are crucial. They represent the trash which is being thrown into the ocean. Next would be the nets and string which cover my chime. The net represents overfishing and the effects of commercial farming, and the vast amount of string is to show how much garbage is just piling up in the ocean. Then there is the sponge, which in turn represent sea life, as sponges live in the ocean. Lastly there is the petroleum. By dipping the sponge in petroleum, it represents oil spills and all the toxic chemicals which we dump into the ocean. More specifically, by dipping the sponge in the petroleum, it shows how it negatively affects the animals which exist within the ocean ecosystem. The smell of the petroleum, I hope, it helps bring attention to my chime.
We need to keep our oceans clean and the things that live within it happy. Everything is connected to one another, and if you disturb one area, everything else will collapse. I can’t address every issue in the world, but I hope through my topic and chime that it brings some change by bringing awareness to the issue of ocean pollution in others.