For this project, we were given the challenge to make something out of paper. We could create anything as long as it had a meaning or message behind it regarding paper waste in the world.

Ideas and Sketches:

At the beginning of the project, we discussed various approach we could take. The image below shows our rough sketches and thinking process.

The ideas we thought of were:

• creating a sculpture of food out of paper, representing the idea of ‘biodegradable’ things.
• making a wine bottle to present the idea of ‘intoxicating the world’
• other ideas included a hat, dress or beauty products.

We initially wanted to focus on beauty products because just like our flaws, humans cover the flaws of the world and avoid dealing with global warming or other world problems. We attempt to create fake lashes out of paper and with a little bit of water, stuck it to our eyelashes. We created a prototype shown below:

However, we wanted to take a step back to think of more ideas with a stronger meaning or message.

We went through some researching and came across to issue behind mass producing children’s toys. Something most people don’t notice is that toys are one kind of product that has been massively wasted over the years. Especially toys made out of plastic as they are hard to recycle. Something psychologically interesting to us is how most people don’t focus on the extent of the waste they produce when they buy toys because they are paying too much attention to their children.

We decided that we want to raise awareness towards this issue, therefore, we researched what we could create. We came across the matryoshka (Russian Dolls).

We believe that creating the matryoshka would be most suited for this project because it serves as an object that is a commentary on the mass production of children toys because we are using a very renewable material, it shows that toys don’t necessarily have to be made of harmful substances such as plastic. Additionally, the layers of the matryoshka represent the layers of issues that is concealed within the mass production of children’s toys; the lack of renewability, the lack of foresight from parents buying these toys and the companies inability to change the materials they use.

Final Project: