Water and Design Ethics

Water–it’s vital for life, it’s scarce, it’s a major global issue. We all know that; we have been told since childhood to conserve water, to not let the faucet run while we brush our teeth. But I think that there is more that we could be teaching kids about it. Frankly, I think we could all stand to be a little more educated about it.

Water has been an interest of mine since high school. I think that everyone has a few social, environmental, or political issues that really resonate with them. For me, that’s water. It’s something that I keep coming back to, perhaps because the issues surrounding it disturb me enough that I can’t quite forget about it.

Brian Collier, "Some Properties of
Water: Phase 1, Collection and
Documentation", installation view,
CEPA, Buffalo, NY, 2003.

This interest in water is what prompted me to read an article by Angela Cornelius, Ernie Sherow, and B. Stephen Carpenter, Water: Social Issues and Contemporary Art Education. This article looks at installation art involving water and the collection of it from different places, as well as its transient nature. It also talks about the “visual culture of bottled water” (p. 27). In this portion of the article, it discusses the potential to study graphic design through the design of bottled water, specifically labels. And I think that this is an interesting and valuable thing to discuss with students. It promotes design principles, which are useful both on their own as well as introducing graphic design as a potential area of study and a career option. But I could not help but feel like the way that the article approached this was a bit lacking. Yes, it is important to understand how to make a persuasive design and dissect what it is about a design that makes it persuasive. Though it was not explicitly stated in the article, I think that this lesson could easily cover the idea that we are often being persuaded by a consumer culture without even realizing it. But I also think that there is the potential to apply this in a more holistic way. The article promotes itself as “An interdisciplinary curriculum for grades 9-12” (p. 25). But what about the environmental aspect of this bottle design? What about the ethics of it? Students are essentially practicing marketing a product that harms the environment. For a truly interdisciplinary curriculum, these are vital aspects to consider when approaching package design, especially design for such a controversial and important product that is inherently full of ethical concerns. I think that it is also important to discuss with students the ethical concerns that come with all kinds of art and design. What kind of impact does your work have on the world? As artists and designers, there is an inherent responsibility to evaluate the implications and effects of work.

I think that this is a project that has a lot of amazing potential, and it is one that can be truly interdisciplinary. The article talks about collecting water from different sources and putting into plastic water bottles. This is based on the work of professional artists dealing with the importance of water in their work, specifically focusing on Brian Collier. I think that this is a great starting point, but I also think that paired with the study of package design, it could be turned into more at a high school level. The ethics of bottled water and their environmental impact is a highly relevant issue in today’s society. I think that it is important for students to be asking themselves where their water comes from, and what exactly makes the water in plastic bottles different from any other water. If they collect water from the school fountain in a used plastic bottle that once contained Aquafina water, the refilled water is just as drinkable.

These would be interesting concepts for students to explore in their label designs. I think that this design project could be used as an avenue for students to convey a critical commentary through visual means while learning basic design principles. I believe it would be a good mixture of conceptual content and technical instruction.

Resources:

Collier, B. (2010, ). Some properties of water. Retrieved from http://greenmuseum.org/content/work_index/img_id-629__prev_size-0__artist_id-104__work_id-153.html

Surfrider Foundation. (2010, March 4). Rise above plastics - plastics kill. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6IP3_aRFtA

Cornelius, A., Carpenter, B., & Sherow, E. (2010). Water: social issues and contemporary art education. Art Education, 63(6), 25-31.