Hacktivism Approach- Eli Farnham B

I want to try and use new media to help save our oceans by informing people of how trash is affecting our planet.

Our oceans are getting polluted at astonishing rates. Last year 8 million tons of plastic entered the ocean. This plastic is getting captured in our currents and pooling into ”islands” of plastic and debris (as seen above). My project focuses on informing people about the affects of not recycling and consuming too much plastic.

My idea original idea for a project is to make an interactive VR exhibit to inform and show people how our oceans are being affected by pollution. After coming back and thinking this throw more I’m not sure how effective this would actually be. People know that our oceans have pollutants in them but they don’t really care. They don’t see how it affects there lives. Instead of setting up an exhibit that only a handful of people would get to experience I want to try a “many to many” approach.

My new plan is to set up a phone app where people can post pictures of pollution and write how it is affecting their lives. This could be pictures of beaches cover in plastic to catching fish whose stomachs are full of plastic. This would allow people from around the world share their experiences and let people see the impacts of pollution. In the app you could geotag the locations the pictures were taken and click on the globe to see what it looks like around the world or in your own backyard. All the content on this app would be user provided. This platform is meant to give people a voice and hope people listen.

Budget:

I would build this app in unity and then put it on the app store. This app would take about 20 hours of front end development and 30 of backend to complete. Valuing coding at $20/hour it comes out to $1000 to make plus $100 for development fees and publishing. In total I think It would be around $1300 to make the app.

Here are some sketches of what the app would look like :