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Ian Stewart

Final Project Topic Analysis

Topic:

The environmental/social impact of fracking.

Goal:

My main goal is to understand how fracking harms the environment and how locals/environmental groups attempt to disrupt and oppose fracking operations. I also want to present in an interactive way the tradeoffs between safety and profit that fracking companies make.

Critical analysis:

How has fracking harmed the environment?

What are the alternatives?

Stakeholders:

Governments (local and federal), the planet, the climate, groundwater, local communities, indigenous communities, environmental groups

Maps:

Landfills Reflection

  • What did you learn?

I learned a lot doing this project. I haven’t done a lot of visual work (or any how-to style guides), so I had a fun time researching examples and trying to emulate them. I also learned a lot about the process of constructing landfills and the issues that can arise from a poorly made/operated one. They are very complex systems with their own micro biomes and chemical compositions. I also tried using Photoshop which I am not very familiar with, so I learned a lot about that too.

  • What feedback did you receive? Any reflections on critique itself?

One piece of feedback that I received was that I didn’t get to the elements of satire quick enough or include enough satire. I totally agree. The main point of the guide were the pages towards the end that used the how-to format to illustrate real world issues (ex. pawning off trash and landfills on neighboring cities/states/countries). If I could continue the project or redo it I think I would condense the initial pages to give myself more time to complete the later ones.

  • What might you do differently in terms of process or content?

Echoing the above, I would spend more time on the satire, point-of-view style pages and less on the technical ones.

  • What was inspiring? What parts?

For me, it was really inspiring that I could even make the artwork for the project. I’m not a very confident artist, and I was really doubting my skills. To be able to put something together, artistically, that was cohesive and styled in a way I was proud of was great.

  • Revisit the assignment prompts: how did your project relate to the original prompts, in terms of critical lens, audience, tone, etc… 

I think I did have a critical lens, and I hope my point of view came across in a way that was obvious. The tone felt very satirical to me and using illustrations with a child-like style helped emphasize that a bit given how serious the topic is. I also feel like the metaphor carried well.

  • How did you balance research and experimentation? Which is easier for you? How can you focus more on the areas that you shy away from

The research was definitely easier for me. I found a lot of technical and opinion pieces online and had no shortage of information. If anything, I think I could have have spent less time researching (especially the technical aspects) and more time on the experimentation. That was definitely the harder part and something I shied away from. I think I just need to continue working on art pieces to build more confidence and get more comfortable crafting visuals.

Store Your Trash Like the Pros (Landfills Project 1)

 

Research:

 

Bibliography:

https://scdhec.gov/environment/land-and-waste-landfills/how-landfills-work
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill
https://www.epa.gov/landfills/basic-information-about-landfills
https://www.colorado.edu/ecenter/2021/04/15/hidden-damage-landfills
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/landfills
https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/landfill.htm

Topic 1 Form Analysis

I’m going to do a “How-to” guide in the form of a “Landfills for Dummies”. I think its a way to poke fun at a serious and pressing topics – overconsumption, waste, ecology, environmental impact – which still providing some of the facts about landfills and how they are constructed. 

If I tried a different form, I would probably do something similar to an infomercial advertising landfills. I could go a lot of different ways with it like a satirical sales infomercial marketing the landfill or I could do a serious PSA style announcement. 

I think the “How-to” is well-suited because there is a step-by-step to making a landfill and so using that as a foundation makes sense. 

Topic 1 Interview

I interviewed a sanitation worker who operates a garbage truck in my area and works for the New York Department of Sanitation. He wanted to be anonymous, so for the purpose of this write-up I’ll call him “Steve”. 

Q. How long have you been a sanitation worker?

A. 14 years.

Q. Why did you decide to take on sanitation as a profession?

A. I’ve always been a clean dude. But nobody wakes up and says “I want to pick up trash for my whole life”, you know? It really came down to pay and benefits. The city takes good care of us, and the guys I work with are like family now.

Q. Would you consider yourself a garbage expert?

A. Well, shit. I guess so, yeah.

Q. How many trash bags would you say you collect in a day?

A. Way too many to count. You’ve seen some of these building, right? They have hundreds of people up in there. Sometimes we can get 600 hundred bags from a single building. Shits unreal.

Q. Do you know how many tons of trash you collect?

A. This truck can hold like 10 tons. Maybe 12. Depends on how it gets crushed. 

 

Q. Would you say most of it is recycling or landfill waste?

A. Most of it is black bag landfill trash. And to be honest, the clear bag recycling is worthless. Half of that shit ends up in a landfill anyway because people don’t know how to recycle proper. They mix all their shit together and yeah it gets sorted, but usually that shit goes straight in the ground. But that’s not really my department.

Q. Do you feel like your work is rewarding?

A. I guess so, yeah. You know, I definitely feel like I’m doing a good thing. It’s not a nice job like a doctor or lawyer or something. But I definitely feel like it matters, right? Like if I’m not gonna come by and pick this shit up think about how nasty these streets would be. And shit, even with me here they’re nasty.

At this point Steve needed to get back to work, but I enjoyed hearing his perspective. 

What I learned:

I think this provided some real world context for the scale of the waste management problem. The sheer amount of trash a single building can produce was crazy to me. Also the fact that most of the recycling ends up in a landfill anyways was disheartening. 

Metaphors We Live By

  • Lakoff + Johnson give several examples throughout the text of linguistic metaphorical systems. Are there any you found odd, outdated, or different from metaphorical systems that you use, either personally or in your language, culture, or social sphere? For instance, do you speak about conversation as battle, or use orientational metaphors the same way the authors describe?

To me, the most outdated example was “Rational is up; Emotional is down”. I don’t think people really talk in those terms as much, and as a society, we are becoming increasingly receptive to and accepting of people’s emotions and emotional wellbeing. Rational is up implies that being rational is somehow better, and I’m not sure that that is always the accepted case anymore. 

I definitely do unconsciously think of most thinks in the same metaphorical systems shown by Lakoff and Johnson. The arguments as battle one is especially resonates with me since I grew up in a household of lawyers and arguments were definitely seen as battles. I think it’s a flawed approach though since (ideally) the goal of an argument is to come to a mutual understanding, having different opinions is okay.

 

  • Can you identify a metaphorical system that you commonly use? What do you think is the motivating rationale (“experiential basis”) behind that system – or is there one? Have you ever intentionally (or unintentionally) changed the metaphorical system that you use to speak about a certain subject, to reflect a different experience or worldview?

Maybe one is like solid is down airy/floaty (can’t think of another word) is up. “She’s light on her feet” vs “Sink like a stone”. Or “Head in the clouds” vs “Head in the ground”. This would probably derive from he fact that the solid things drop to the ground and light things float. 

 

  • What metaphors/systems of metaphor are commonly used when discussing your topic? If “the essence of a metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” (5), what other kinds of metaphors might be useful for discussing your topic, or an aspect of your topic?

I wouldn’t say that my topic necissarily has an apparent metaphoric system, but certainly a landfill can be a metaphor for a lot of things. Examples: “This place is a dump”, “They were dumping all of their problems onto me”, “I dumped them”.

Theme Reading Response (Space)

I really liked all 3 of the readings and the video as well. For me the three have somewhat of a common thread. Space exists, kind of by definition, in between things. So in order to define a space we need to first have a division between two things. In the case of The Forgotten Space the sea is a division between where goods are produced and ultimately purchased or distributed. In The Poetics of Space, spaces are defined by the structure of a house and objects within it. In Archipelagos of Design spaces are the characterized by the categories and labels placed on people and places. I guess a way to think about the three pieces together might be that a physical space (like in Poetics) is built from physical materials that arrive via the “forgotten” space of the ocean via shipping container. These materials and objects are then the building blocks that form the foundation, basement, walls, floors, and roof of the building. Then from Archipelagos there is the question of who is allowed to fill that space and how are they to do it? I’m not sure if that makes sense at all, but it kind of helped me connect the three of them.

As some additional thoughts, I like how Forgotten Space highlights how as consumer and a society as a whole we are very disconnected with how goods actually reach us. I am totally one of the people who assumed almost everything comes by land or sky and that boats are kind of a thing of the past. I intuitively knew that was not wrong (since I see boats going through NYC) but I definitely didn’t think that 90% of goods are transported by ship! Also, I loved the idea brought up in Poetics about how a space is changed by what an individual brings into that space. When we fill a house with objects and memories it becomes a home and takes on its own personality and traits. I also really liked the idea that those traits transcend the individual and become part of the space itself. It totally explains why certain spaces have a vibe or feeling associated with them. It’s like hearing the echoes of everyone and everything that once occupied that space in some capacity or another. I also really like how Archipelagos touches on that idea as well but from the opposite perspective. That empty spaces have a resonance because of what they were and what they may one day become.

Systems Map Landfills (Space)


 

What I learned:

I learned that landfills are actually incredibly complex systems with more stakeholders and parts than I could fit on the mind map. They may seem very simple (just a bunch of trash being stuffed under some dirt) but there are serious impacts on economic oppertunities, local ecology, climate emisions, local government, local property value, groundwater contamination, and so many other effects.