How the Sea conveys:The Baltic Sea Coast of Germany
Haku Sungho
Master Exhibition
January 13th-16th, 2022
Universität der Künste Berlin Sound Studies and Sonic Arts Master of Arts
Acknowledgement
I would like to acknowledge and give my warmest thanks to my supervisors Prof. Daisuke Ishida and Jan Thoben, who made this master project possible. I am also grateful to Hans Peter Kuhn, and Warner Brückmann(GEOMAR-Helmholtz-Zentrum für Ozeanforschung Kiel) for their advice and technical support. Regarding the cutting of the record, I am indebted to Moritz Illner of Duophonic (Augsburg) for his willingness to accept my difficult request. Finally, I would like to express my deepest gratitude and appreciation to my wife and family for their support throughout this project and my studies, and to the Pola Art Foundation(JP) for their financial support over the past year.
The Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a large inland sea in northern Europe, surrounded by Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, including Germany. The area is 377,000 km2, and the average depth is 55 meters, which is quite shallow. It is said that it takes 25 to 30 years to replace almost all of the seawater in this enclosed inland sea, making it an environment where pollutants can easily settle and accumulate. World War II, the economic development and industrialization of the 1950s led to serious pollution of the Baltic Sea. However, in 1974, the Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area known as the Helsinki Convention, the world's first international protection agreement for a specific sea area, was signed. The Helsinki Convention was updated in 1992 to take into account geopolitical changes in the region and new environmental issues. *
* Website of HELCOM- Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission
Plastic
The word "plastic" is said to be derived from the Greek word “plastikos” which means “capable of being molded, or shaped". This means that the material can be deformed when a certain force is applied, and even when the force is removed, the material remains in its original shape. The plastic used to make the record disk Sway (work 8.I) is called High Density Poly Ethylene(HDPE), which is Resin identification code number 2. HDPE has a low melting point of 125°C, which makes it easy to process in a household oven, for example. Currently, PVC (polyvinyl chloride) is the mainstream material used for vinyl records because it is light and strong, however, the processing of PVC is complicated and difficult for individuals. For this reason, using HDPE, which is relatively common in everyday products and easy to handle in terms of processing. It could be said that HDPE is a good example of the nature of plastikos, the origin of the word plastic. In terms of the method of identifying the ocean plastic wastes, since I do not have specialized equipment, it is difficult to distinguish it from LDPE or colored PET, so I cut it into small pieces and put it in the oven with HDPE plastic to identify it. Even at the temperature at which HDPE becomes slightly viscous, some non-HDPE plastics melt into a liquid state or cannot be reshaped at all. Because of this classification, fragments(work-3.I) that are too small can't be used as material for record disks. The reason for adding the "s" to waste, which is basically an uncountable noun, is to denote this compounding of various small, unidentifiable plastics.
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This installation is a series of works created based on the transformation process of materials collected during field research along the Baltic Sea coast of Germany from September 2021 to January 2022. Field research has been conducted to date in Baabe, Göhren, Sellin, and Binz on the Rügen island, and also in Warnemünde, Kiel, Schönberg, Timmendorf, and Travemünde. The sound of waves in the Baltic Sea, where the marine plastic was collected, has been recorded(cut) on a 12-inch vinyl record (Sway Disk01/work-8.I) made entirely of the ocean plastic wastes (HDPE), and played it back with images of the sea (work-1). This body of work, including Sway, which I have been conceiving and producing since 2019, is based on the environmental issues of German Baltic coast, particularly marine plastics, but there is a point of clarification here. This project is not an ecological activity, nor is it a scientific research. Needless to say that I do not deny that the project itself contains such a character and process, but it is not directly aimed at solving or mitigating environmental problems itself. I am neither an environmental activist nor a scientist. It is true that collecting the plastic through this field work may slightly clean the beach that day, but there are many more efficient ways to protect the environment. To use a more concrete example, during my field research, I did not collect any plastic or other trash that was not clearly High Density Poly Ethylene (e.g. cigarette butts, broken bottles, candy bags, empty cans, etc.) due to the time constrains. Of course, environmental protection activities and scientific methods do not exist separately as completely different areas, such as deciding the location of research based on scientific data, but I believe there are things that emerge only by confronting such problems, phenomena, and materials through artistic methods that are different from these activities. My goal is to seek ways to consider, and observe these issues through art.
“SENCES:
One can look at seeing. Can one hear hearing, feel breathing, etc. . . . ?”
Marcel Duchamp
2900 x 2100(monitors 1240H) - 4 x 55 inch monitors, 4 Loudspeakers
Video 5' 30, with the sound of 12-inch record disk (8.I) made of the Ocean Plastics from the Baltic Sea, Germany
260H x 180W x 178D - Seawater, Seaweed, Sea sand from the Baltic Sea, Germany, Wood, Acryl, Light, Electric Fan
3. I. Fragments, 2021
300 x 200 - Wood, Sea sand, Petri dishes, The Ocean Plastic Wastes from the Baltic Sea, Germany
300 x 200, Wood, Sea sand, The most common plastics (Fire works) from the Baltic Sea, Germany
*Viewers can open the cap and smell it, but it is toxic and might give a headache and nausea.
350 x 250 - 6 x 120 medium format reversal film(PET), Light box, Wood
275 x 225 - 10.1-inch Tablet PC, Wood, Acryl
100 x 100 - The thread after cutting(recording) a Sway Disk01 (8.I), Petri dish
100 x 100 - The thread after cutting(recording) a Sway Prototype02(8.II), Petri dish
The sound of the waves of the Baltic Sea(Göhren, Germany) is recorded
12-inch High Density Poly Ethylene Disk, Plastics from daily life
9. I. Adhesion, 'Sway, Disk 01 -The Baltic Sea Coast of Germany-' , 2021
400 x 330 - The cooking seat after 'Sway, Disk 01 (8.I)' making
400 x 330 - The cooking paper after 'Sway, Prototype Disk 02 (8.II)' making
III. Adhesion, 'Sway Prototype Disk 01 -The Baltic Sea Coast of Germany- ' , 2021(Right)
400 x 330 - The cooking paper
after 'Sway, Prototype Disk 01 (8.III)' making
Exhibition View
