This week’s find. An interactive art installation about ocean plastics and bodies. You wave at this waste, and it waves back. Can a reflection of our bodies in floating waste plastic make us feel like we’re turning into plastic? How does this work? Discuss.

The idea

‘When plastic material sits in our ocean for long enough it starts to degrade into nano plastics, a type of microplastic material that can traverse cell walls into fat and muscle tissue. This is a dynamic that Dutch designer Thijs Biersteker recently explored in his latest installation Plastic Reflectic, an interactive mirror that uses motion tracking technology to turn the spectator’s reflection into a silhouette made from hundreds pieces of real trash. “Turning us…slowly into plastic,” the artist explains’ (Ainley 2016 np).

How it works

‘Plastic Reflectic is an installation equipped with an interactive mirror that uses motion tracking technology to transform spectators’ reflections into silhouettes made of plastic trash. To make these silhouettes, Biersteker’s installation is comprised of a horizontal pixel grid housed with 601 real pieces of plastic trash, which move via 601 mini waterproof engines hidden beneath a pool of black biobased water’ (Waste360 Staff 2016 np).

Find out more on the Plastic Reflectic website.