Looped States - Designing with Data

We have created a world of plastic. It is both fantastic for us yet devastating at the same time. Plastic is a miracle, it's light, versatile, and cheap to make, but on the other hand, it is lethal. Plastic can be deadly to seabirds that eat it mistaking it for food, and can physically injure themselves or starve themselves. Plastic is a major cause as to why 90% of New Zealand seabirds are threatened or at risk of extinction. I have tried to portray an unnaturally mystical world, with all the elements from the moon to the water made from plastic. As birds made from pure 'natural' media such as leaves and twigs float down, they are unable to avoid falling into the water and turning into plastic themselves, following the saying 'you are what you eat'. The world through the birds eye is a shiny, colourful illusion, and if we do not do something to change this, these birds will likely go extinct. The purpose of this GIF is to make us realise that we have created a world from plastic, and this needs to be addressed before our native species have to suffer the consequences of our problems.

For my second assignment in designing with data, (the coding design paper that I am taking this semester), we were challenged to evaluate upon our first assignment. The first assignment focused on finding a statistic that was relevant to NZ and on one of the UNs sustainability goals. The statistic I chose was that 90% of New Zealand seabirds are threatened or at risk of extinction. I created a GIF which represented this statistic, using only primitive shapes and a black and white colour scheme. Here is that GIF, and if you want to see my process for it, you can click here. I have added pages from my project page on Miro to show my process, if you want to check out the page in full detail you can view it here.

For the second assignment, we had to create an animation and GIF which represented the cause(s) of our statistic, and this time we were not limited to colour, or shapes.

Causes - Why are so many seabirds at risk?

I started this assignment by conducting some more research into why NZ seabirds are at such risk. I found a great report, Threats to Seabirds of Northern Aotearoa New Zealand written in 2019 outlining the threats that New Zealand Birds are facing. All of my research was based upon this report (Whitehead et al, 2019). They go into depth on a wide variety of risks that seabirds are faced with. I narrowed down my research to the topics that I was most interested in which were:

- Weeds

- Plastics

- Commercial Fisheries

- Disturbances on land/water

Weeds

Wishart, S. (2018). African Boxthorn.

(2013). Kikuyu Grass. Times Online.

Weeds can be harmful to seabirds, by physically hurting them such as the weed boxthorn which has sharp edges on it and cut birds flying past. Kikuyu grass can smother nesting habitats of seabirds. Birds can also get tangled in fibrous growth and can die from getting hurt or not being able to get out. These weeds can get transferred around via wind, humans, and land birds.

Commercial Fisheries

There are many different threats that commercial fishing poses to NZ seabirds. The birds are attracted to offal and offcuts from fishing boats and are drawn towards the boats. They can dive after bait, and become hooked on nets or entangled and then drown as the line goes down. The same thing can happen as the line is being raised where the birds will go after uneaten bait. They can also get caught on trawl lines and cable nets.

(2019). National Plan of Action - Seabirds 2020.

Plastics

The plastics that end up in the ocean float and will become visible and available to opportunistic seabirds. The plastic forms a substrate for biofilms, which can emit a chemical odor similar to prey the birds feed on such as zooplankton and phytoplankton, making it much easier for the birds to be fooled by the plastic through their smell. In some species as well, they may be visually attracted to the plastic and misidentify it as food evidenced by the certain selection of coloured plastics found in sea birds. The plastic may cause blockages or cut the birds internally. It could also starve them as their digestive tracts are being filled with plastic and nothing else actually nutritious or to fuel them is entering.

Disturbances on Land and Water

In coastal regions, pets such as cats and dogs pose a great threat to seabirds, not to mention feral animals. Urban coastal development increases this risk and also reduces feeding, nesting and breeding places for the birds. Coastal development also reduces biodiversity and can damage the ecosystem processes that take place in those regions which has potential to reduce the success of foraging. Another impact of coastal development is that their are more vehicles and seabirds can be run over, such as little penguins or birds stunned by headlights. Beach driving can also be a risk as it runs the potential of running over nesting sites, as nests are often camouflaged in the sand (this can be addressed by limiting off-road driving to seasons when the birds aren't breeding. But the greatest threat is from more people utilizing these coastal areas often with an ignorance or disregard for the needs of these birds.

Boats driving past colonies on the coast can disturb the birds, and cause them to fly away and abandon their chicks for a shirt while, which open them up to risk of predation. The biggest threat however is speeding boats which have been observed to drive right through resting or feeding flocks (areas of the water where there are a large number of birds resting or feeding). These birds can struggle to take off if they were just resting and can be killed or injured. Birds that were diving for food are also at great risk as they need to return to the surface for air and they could easily be hit. The injured birds are unlikely to survive as if they can't swim or fly they will starve. And if they were breeding, then their chick is also likely to starve with only one parent feeding it. The speed is the main risk factor as if the birds are given enough time they are able to get out of the way.

Evolution

Climate change poses risks to the seabirds, as changed in heat tolerance limits or phenological mismatch happens where the cycle of the prey and predator are not in sync meaning that prey is unavailable to the seabirds. It has been evidenced that some species of seabirds can evolve through 'prey shifting' where if prey is unavailable to them (often due to the evolution of climate change as explained previously) they can shift their prey and breed successfully, the Little Blue Penguin is an example of this. However this could have negative or positive impacts. it may help the birds breed successfully and keep the species alive. prey species may decline or shift phenological with the seabirds breeding cycles, but also some resources could be replaced by another. This could have impacts depending on how similar the new prey is to the original, whether it has the same energy content from the same amount of foraging effort, and also how this impacts their reproductive success.

Future

While researching this topic, a repeating risk is that if breeding adult birds are killed then their chicks will also often die which can pose threats especially to endangered species. Another factor is that some demographics of species can be at risk as well, as some species have selective age or sex related partitioning in foraging areas. For example the Antipodean wandering albatross has a massive skew survivorship rate dominated by the males, with the females declining twice as rapidly. This also poses great threat to colonies.

Ideation

I then moved on to ideating some animation ideas from these causes I had researched. I first started by brainstorming ideas, then sketched, choosing my favourite ones to move on with.

Still in the ideation phase, I decided to create some simple graphics and see my favourite sketches in action. I played with different media to create the graphics such as drawing, digital and collage. I also coded the animation straight away rather than creating in Illustrator first, (which is what I did for assignment 1) as I felt more confident in my coding abilities and I wanted to make sure that I could actually execute the code.

Inspiration

Once I had explored some mediums and found that the collage texture effect looked really cool, I decided to gather some inspiration before moving on. I created a mood board from Pinterest. Here is the link to the board on Pinterest.

I found that I was drawn to the surrealist collages and prints. I actually did a surrealist project during highschool using magazine cutouts and spent a lot of time trying to create textures that I hope to draw on for this project. I also think that doing this project with a 'surrealist' mindset, it is like an expansion of my project for assignment 1 which was a little bit abstract, this takes it to a new level.

Creating Water

After gathering some inspiration, I decided to try make some sort of water looking graphics. I looked in my recycling bin and pulled out some pieces of plastic, cardboard and magazines to explore with.

Plastic Water

I first created some water texture using a plastic bag and a blue towel that I had. I took a lot of pictures using different lighting and crumpling up the plastic in different ways. I then tried to add the water to a code animation where the water would swap images out, which took me quite a long time to figure out. This video helped me a lot by the Coding Train, as well as this code snippet someone posted, from which I was able to adapt to my code.

I also created some background iterations which kept changing slightly throughout the whole prcoess.

Collage water

I also created some water from collaging together magazine pieces.

Putting it Together

I then added the birds that I created in my first iterations to see what it looked like all together, and also to get some feedback.

Once I'd put it together and got some feedback, I decided to move on with the collage water idea. Next was to work on the birds and plastic bottle!

Birds

As this world I'd created was made all from plastic and cardboard, I thought that the birds could be made out of something more 'natural', to symbolise how something so pure and made from nature is being surrounded by a plastic world that they can't escape. I collected some leaves and grass from outside and created some birds made from lively looking leaves as well as dead leaves (I ended up not using the dead leaf birds as I couldn't work out how to code them in!). I wanted the birds to turn from lively, to dead, and finally to plastic. I also took a picture of a water bottle from my recycling to use as well!

I then played around adding these birds and water bottle to what I had. I explored with size and placement, and then got some feedback from my peers and tutors. I realised that I needed to work on my background composition, and so did a few more iterations, before trying to add some splashes!

I also played with having the birds fall behind one wave or two waves. Having two waves used a lot more code as I am still not super proficient in processing, but it gave the piece a lot more depth.

Splashes

A comment I got from one of my tutors was to add a splash when the birds hit the water to add in the dead leaves and make the transition from bird to plastic smoother.

My code looked like this at this point, it was very long and not very neat.

Polishing

The last thing to do was polish off some things. So I went through each of my assets and made slight changes until I was happy with them. The final GIF is too large to upload on here, however here is a screen recording of it, and you can access the final GIF here.

This was my final code. I know that it could've been more efficient, but I decided to focus more on the graphics and the visual elements, as I knew that my code worked and I didn't want to mess around with it too much as then it could mess up the whole code (ask me how I know).

Overall I am really proud of myself for what I've been able to achieve through this assignment and I had a lot of fun exploring different textures and collage media.

Below were my final assets that I used.