When brainstorming early in the process of creating our wave, the idea was to use not only plastic bottles, but a variety of plastics as the consumption of all plastics types, not only bottles, that invade the natural habitat of the oceans. One of the best ways of using other plastics is on the crest of the wave, where bubble wrap has been used to resemble the white foam that large waves create as they crash. We want to create a sense of our plastic wave coming down or over the viewer as it creates a simple direct link to the oceans plastic pollution.
We attached a layer of bubble wrap to the front of the wave. This is the crest of the wave where the white lights are placed. This catches the light and creates a really amazing frothy looking front to our wave. We attached the bubble wrap using fishing wire to the wire mesh frame. Threading the lights within the bubble wrap will hopefully protect them a bit from the elements.
We have also incorporated thick industrial plastic bags by sewing them in with nylon and a tapestry needle to hide the mesh frames on the inside, through the middle behind the milk bottles, and then also at the sides to join the front and back of the wave. Sewing the bubble wrap onto the front was easy enough compared to most of the wiring required in this project! However, threading the plastic behind the milk bottles was quite challenging, as by this stage all the other bottles had been strung onto the structure, which made it difficult to get right into the centre to attach the plastic sheets.
Image are our own.
synthetic nature 