Captain Planet Project

Brad Saiki - Wind Joe Intile - Fire / Heart

Libby Corliss - Water Kimberly Palmer - Earth

Kimberly Palmer

earth When we all decided to embark on this Captain Planet concept, I was excited to take on finding a way to raise awareness about our Earth and what we do to our planet. I choose to focus on trash and recycling because it is such a simple concept that only takes an open and conscious decision to make even the smallest bit of difference. I came across some interesting facts about recycling - centering around energy conversation, decomposition rates, and recycling rates. After I had done my research, I had to next come up with a way to efficiently represent the facts in a way that would catch student’s eye while they are walking past a recycling receptacle on campus or throwing away a bottle in the EMU. I choose to use iconic symbols of the objects (i.e a can, bottle, banana peel) and then reduce the text from within the object. I like the aesthetics of being able to read the object as an icon from a distance, then expanding upon the curiosity of wanting to read the text and understand the meaning of what recycling a single item can do for the environment. I hope that by seeing some of these stickers adhered around campus, that the campus community becomes somewhat more aware about what little they can do to make a difference.

Brad Saiki

I started this project with the desire to raise awareness about different aspects of the earth’s air and wind in a way that would bring about a reaction in people who saw the various installations. I took the idea of wind and tried to play with more than just the sense of sight, installing wind chimes that would draw the attention of passers by to the vinyl decals placed in public places. I decided to use the most startling facts I could find on the internet, but I decided not just to focus on the negative. There are a lot of negative polluting factors in our society but we are beginning the turn around with investments in wind power and wind power technology. http://bsaiki.blogspot.com/

Stickers

The Factory Sticker

The Windmill Sticker

The decals are based off of various different concepts

The Factory sticker is based off of

death rates in China compared to the amount that coal power is used The windmill sticker is based on the wind power production statistics of The United States

The Hummer stickers are based off of air quality figures in the United States

The Hummer Stickers

Air Intake Center

Air Intake Center

Air Duct

Air Duct

SUV

Parking Garage

Leave the damming to me!

by Libby Corliss

Water With so many issues to explore within the vast topic of water, I focused my attention on two very specific causes. 1. Safe, effective hydropower. 2. The positive works of beavers. Yes, I know you must be thinking “those two topics are completely unrelated,” but I will connect them in a moment. My research on hydropower led me to understand that building dams to produce electricity can be excessively expensive, short-term, and unsafe to humans and the environment. Here are a few of the reasons: Dams change the flow pattern of a river, forming a large reservoir of water upstream. While rivers normally have a fairly homogenous temperature, reservoirs have layered temperatures, with warm water rising to the surface and cold water sinking below. The colder layer of water has a different oxygen content than the homogenous mix, and when released, it adversely affects the plant life and fauna downstream.

Water that exits the dam’s turbine usually contains very little suspended sediment, which can lead to scouring of river beds and loss of riverbanks. To mitigate the problem, we must continually collect and redistribute sediment–a process that is both time consuming and expensive. Older dams often lack a fish ladder, which keeps many fish from moving up stream to their natural breeding grounds, causing failure of breeding cycles or blocking of migration paths. Even the presence of a fish ladder does not always prevent a reduction in fish reaching the spawning grounds upstream. In some areas, young fish are transported downstream by barge during parts of the year. Large dams can cause the loss of entire ecospheres, including endangered and undiscovered species. These are just a few of the negative impacts of building dams.

Conclusion: Leave dam building to nature’s expert engineers: Beavers. Below: Low head hydro power applications use river current and tidal flows to produce energy. These applications do not need to dam or retain water to create head. Using the current of a river or the naturally occurring tidal flow to create electricity may provide a renewable energy source that will have a minimal impact on the environment.

A Campaign for Beavers Two months ago, I had no interest in beavers. And while I’m

not certain what led to my rapid change of heart, I can now proudly say that I am a beaver enthusiast. Aside from being overly eager, they are also extremely organized, intelligent, resourceful, and determined. Beavers have the power to transform the earth’s landscape more than any other species, second only to humans. The dams that beavers methodically build create lakes and wetlands that support hundreds of other species, many of which are endangered and could not survive without the habitats beavers provide. When beavers eventually move to a new location, the wetlands they leave behind turn into a fertile meadow, and eventually, a deep forest. In the 1800s, beavers were nearly hunted to extinction for their soft pelts and castor glands. Today, they are most often hunted (or exterminated) because people consider them pests. While it is true that once a beaver family “moves in”, it is difficult to persuade them to leave, there are ways to work with them. The following excerpt is a case study on such a situation: “Outside San Francisco, in downtown Martinez, California, a male and female beaver arrived in Alhambra Creek in 2006. The beavers built a dam 30 feet wide and six feet high, and chewed through half the willows and other creek side landscaping the city planted as part of its $9.7 million 1999 flood-improvement project. When the City Council wanted to remove the beavers because of fears of flooding, local residents

organized to protect them, forming an organization called “Worth a Dam”. The resolution included installing a pipe through the beaver dam so that the pond’s water level could not become excessive. Now protected, the beaver family has transformed Alhambra Creek from a trickle into multiple dams and beaver ponds, which in turn, led to the return of steelhead trout and river otter in 2008, and mink in 2009.” This portion of my project serves as a form of positive public relations for beavers, to spread the word about the good work beavers do in our environment. The images represented here were cut life-size into vinyl, adhered to sign-board, and posted around town to engage the public. It is my goal to emphasize their natural personality traits in a comical manner.

Above: Designed with Adobe Illustrator, this image humorously captures the “eager beaver” stereotype as it presents the actual results of a beaver’s life’s work.

Left: Beavers slap their flat, wide tails on the water’s surface to warn other beavers of danger or to deliver a strong message to intruders. The beaver in this image warns the viewer to leave his species alone.

Sources Cited: 1. “Hydroelectric power without the dam?” (Blog Online Posting). 2008-03-11 2. Carolyn Jones (April 16, 2008). “Moment of truth for Martinez beavers”. 3. “Worth a Dam website”. 4.

Joseph

/ Intile

My portion of the Captain Planet Project focused on the themes of Fire and Heart. I translated these themes into the concepts of smoking and healthcare. I felt both were extremely relevant issues to raise awareness for today, and that they would also be simple enough to communicate through design. When it comes to raising awareness, I usually choose blunt ways of conveying my message. With the anti-smoking stickers I wanted to focus on the ‘gross-out’ factor to get people to think about how disgusting putting a cigarette in your mouth really is. In this area, I went for two approaches: one was strictly symbolic with the ‘blow-job’ image, while the other used the iconic form of a stenciled cigarette displaying the many harms and gross facts about smoking. My whole idea with this project was to get my message across with little more than a quick glance. My hope is that when people see these around campus, outside buildings or on smoking posts they will get a strong and effective message about this gross habit. For the healthcare portion I wanted to use a similar idea of shocking people with quick messages about the state of healthcare and the many, many costs we will all inevitably face at one time or another. Again, I paired the iconic symbol of a hospital cross with facts about some of the most common hospital procedures in the country and their average costs. The purpose of these stickers is to let people know how big a deal this really is and how big a dent such routine and expected procedures can put in our bank accounts.

Fire

/ Heart