My research topic for Seminar was about how plastic pollution in the ocean can impact marine animals and eventually the human consumption. As I was brainstorming for Bridge Project 4, I came across a green artist called Paulo Grangeon who creates installations to raise awareness about animal endangerment. He is famous for his 1,600 pandas sculpture, and each one represents one of only 1,600 pandas that are left in the wild, and these pandas look like a crowd when assembled in a city square. I thought it would be interesting to also create a sculpture on endangered species today. However, I want this sculpture to be imagined in a public space, so I created this digitally with a photo I took of Central Park. I researched and found the most endangered species to be black rhino, sea turtles, gorilla, orangutans, elephants, Sumatran tiger, and freshwater dolphin.
My design is based on how endangered they are. The bottom animal is the least endangered while the top animal is the most endangered. The darkness of the color also classifies it. Since the animals are stacked together, it is hard to tell which animal is which, so I included a label holder next to the sculpture where it consists of the types of animals and some small facts about each of them.
Through this project, I learned that human is the reason why animals are becoming extinct and it is really important that we preserve the habitat for animals. Recently, there was news that addresses animal extinction. According to CNN, scientists warned that “one million of the planet’s eight million species are threatened with extinction by humans, in what is described as the most comprehensive assessment of global nature loss ever.”
