Coffee Cups

Project started Fall 2006. Current status: Dormant. Cups are still in japanese room -tigoe

I went ahead and added this so anyone interested in the coffee cup project can communicate here:

Participants so far:
Andrew Schneider, Anh Nguyen, Pollie Barden, Kate Hartman, Rebecca Bray, Ilteris Kaplan, Jaki Levy, Preston Noon

Where do we go from here?

It looks like over the past week and half there has been some success to the coffee cups. I found out talking with Rosie that Starbucks gives you a discount if you bring your own cup. I am working with Megan to find other cafes that will offer a discount for cups. Megan is planning to put the list by the coffemake station.

Now that we have awareness, do we want to formally offer an alternative, or keep the collection going and Andrew can realize his fungus? Could the cup collection tie in with ITPlant for starting seedlings for new plants? People may bond more with the plants if they are the ones to plant them. Or should they be a stand invitation for rest of the floor to take and use in someway. Just trying to think of ways to not let the awareness die.

Reference Links

• Washington U. composting projectlink
• LCA paper vs ceramic

CC 10-05-06 oct. 5th - room 447 from 9pm - 12am is reserved for the follow up to next Tuesday.

CoffeeCups 09-24-06

What is this?

• raise awareness about the volume of waste on a local level
• track behavior that adds to waste
• strategize and implement behavioral change

How are we doing this?

• focus on a small section of waste to be repurposed -- disposable cups
• collect cups from the floor before they hit the garbage cans for a one week period starting Tuesday, September 26th.
• create an evolving, looming, and encroaching structure to display the volume of waste.

What are we doing?

NOW :

• collect: cups from the floor already in the trash or about to be thrown away.
  Pollie has placed a grey NYU bag under one of the tables in the shop until Tuesday for us to store what we are collecting so far.
• count: the number of trash cans that will be turned into "satellite" stations.
  • total number of satellites = 26 (30 if include bathrm)
  • pcomp lab - 4 (additional 2 in bathrm =6)
  • Long Hall - 6
  • Lounge - 6
  • Back hall 6 (additonal 2 in bathrm = 8)
  • lobby - 4
• get: materials
  • boxes for satellites (Pollie)
  • funnels (Anh)
  • grey water dispenser (Kate)
  • signs (made from cups)(ALL/we'll make the signs on Monday night @ 9:00)
  • project pedestal from rob (andrew)
  • used Deer Park jug (andrew)

How does it work?

• central station
• satellite stations
• installation

CENTRAL STATION:

• people leaving cups here will have to use the system themselves.
  If they're at the central station, there's hopefully enough interest at least to get them to do it themselves.
  At set of simple graphical instructions will prompt this good Samaritan to:
  first - empty the remaining liquid into a used Deer Park water jug topped with a funnel.
  Some one may have to empty this every so often, depending on use.
  second - fill their cup with water from a grey-water dispenser, slosh it around some, and pour it back into the top of the dispenser.
  Some one will have to change the water every so often, depending upon use.
  third - stack their cup in a third bin/receptacle/chute. That's it.

SATELLITE STATIONS:

• made from repurposed shoe/shirt/doughnut boxes, these will act as alternate stations to the central station.
  People don't want to have to walk all the way to the lounge just to have to wash their stupid paper cup.
• using common sense, these kind souls will empty the liquid left in their cups as they see fit and stack their cup on the stack already in place.
  (we'll pre-set these stations with enough cups to make it evident what is going on.)
• a separate place for lids will also be present

(is this fun / engaging / why do people want to do this? what do they get from it?)

INSTALLATION:

• the idea is to create a seemingly growing presence from the cups. One idea was based on the work of Tara Donovan

What are we thinking?

(in progress...)

The basic idea:
- collect coffee cups and possibly other things like plastic bottles, take-out food containers and etc...
- use the collected pieces to form a pixel sculpture in the lounge where students can see how much gets thrown out
- make something useful out of the collected pieces

Additional ideas:
- make a modularizing process for the collected pieces so students can add to the sculpture like legos and building blocks
- have the project up all the time, not just one day a week.
- time-lapse footage of the sculpture being built everyday, so we can see how fast and much waste gets accumulated.
anh

An area is identified that will become the mug storage place.

I start off disposing my cup in that area, (the stacking or whatever)

(Shelving, of some sort introduced and I told to place my cup on this art piece.

I get a permanent spot etc when I bring a mug and use it.

Then I get it and bring in mug.

The grid, honeycomb whatever that the cups are placed on will become where the coffee mugs are stored.\\

So that with the time lapse you see first the build up the coffee cups and then the “reward” the
transition to mugs appearing. I buy into because I visually see my impact and which element I am
contributing too. Ideally, I see less paper cups and more mugs and want to help move in that direction.
In addition it is also subtle visual reminder every day “Oh yeah, I need to bring in my mug”
instead of nagging, If I have yet to make the switch.

 If they are “cubbies” in some way then the mug storage becomes another “art” piece. In addition it 

would help cut down on clutter or mugs getting knocked off and broken. To carry on to future
generations, the mugs’ could be passed down to future students, to prevent purchasing of new mugs.
In addition, to the ritual of headshots, lockers and bins you get to pick you mug off from the
selection.

I coffee places will fill up their own “travel” mugs or whatever. Will they fill up personal cups?

pollie?

I've decided to post the original proposal here:

THROW CLOSE

To throw something away means to get it out of sight, and subsequently out of mind. Throw away. It's an odd twist of linguistics that has become so familiar to us as to be invisible when heard, much like the phrase "hurry up." What does it mean? When taken literally, "throw it away" becomes:

It is much to easy to throw things away. Most of the products we buy on a day to day basis are manufactured with this telos in mind. Paper coffee cups, plastic grocery bags, and syrofoam microchip packaging are all intended to fulfill their one-time purpose, then it's off to that great-big landfill in the sky.

But that great and big landfill is not in the sky. It's in Fresh Kills. That's a problem. Since what set this train of thought in motion was grammer taken for granted, I suggest we similarly look at our waste with the same twisted face.

• Here's the idea:

Produce tangible-media data visualisation projects using the medium of everyday trash on the 4th Floor of the Tisch building at NYU. What do we use so often and throw away so often that it becomes invisible? How can we make it impactfully visible once more?

• I suggest we start with a coffee cup week.

• perhaps we line them all up end to end.
• perhaps I invite the makeup of the floor to stash their trash in my locker as a way to measuer volume by another metric
• perhaps this evovles into a series | differnt trash every week / different implementation every week

if you have any thoughts about this idea, please feel free to post it here or e-mail me at untitle [at] mac [dot] com.

andrew

A few things to add to this idea:

• It's not just the cups we're dealing with, it's the leftover liquid in the cups. I suggest having a reservoir of some sort into which the excess liquid gets dumped to dramatize the amount of wasted water as well.
• This is a good illustration, but also one that will irk some people. Be prepared for that. Don't shy away from it, but use it as a chance to win the irked over through discussion.
• Come up with a plan for disposing of the sculpture properly when you've made your point. Nothing's worse than suposedly eco-ventionist artwork that adds to the problem.
• Perhaps separation of materials could be part of the sculpture's aesthetic. This makes disposal easier, and makes a point about materials, not just general waste. For example, perhaps cups are surrounded by bottles are surrounded by cans? I'd suggest monitoring the sculpture during the day and re-arranging it for best effect as you go.

tigoe

I am sharing my raw throughts.

• I believe the sculpture should extend horizontally instead of vertically. Meaning, putting cups next to each other on the floor and drawing a path with them. And yes it is going to probably give uncomfort to us all and some will even kick it intentionally but I think it would be more talkative this way. Why did I come up with this, I don't really know. One small part of my mind just wants it to be more activist and also blurring the lines between the piece and the audience since I thought we already used to looking at sculptures out of trash. But what if becomes something that goes into your way. Maybe not.
• Also as Tom stated it is not only coffecups we are dealing, I am sure we can find cues of different throwable things on the floor.

and mashing I like the idea of Andrew's " Produce tangible-media data visualisation projects using the medium of everyday trash on the 4th Floor of the Tisch building at NYU." We can voice this project like a manifesto, maybe statement, as the beginning project of a series of projects which we will not stop until we see certain amount of feedback in recycled bins. Those projects would literally try everything to make us aware how much we are wasting here on the fourth floor. Not only cups, but bathroom towels, cups on the water machine, computer monitors that are left opened, an area that is left untidy and much more we can research and find on the way.

• Why I am thinking of these as a series? Coffee cup is a great idea, but I am sure some people are going to be "hey I am not even drinking coffee" for example. But if we put the idea of wasting as the central point and try to make multiple projects out of it, I believe that would be more strong.
• As in cradle by cradle the writers has stated, it is not only reducing the amount of harm we gave to the nature, but we should find ways of designing products which would not go wasted. Making our coffee cups/mugs is a great step in terms of that. What about sharing? Not necessarily cofee cups which might be or might not be healthy to share. Yet again, if we make sure to clean them afterwards, why not?
• I just wanted to put some thoughts in my mind, I am definitely into this idea. It is a great start!

ilteris

Coffee Maker Page megan

• I have been the lighting Engineer on the CoffeeCups Project, which has been, arguably,yet to be titled. This past September I was up on Central Park West in the Seventies and found a shopping bag filled with Christmas Lights, well, I found seven strings of LED white lights to be Christmas indeed. They have now been installed into the base of every recycled cup of the sphere. And though it does not resemble to Times Square New Year's Ball, our ITP sustainable ball will surely light up the show next month. As of right now we have over 400 cups in the sphere.

preston