Marine Microplastics (W.I.P)

An underwater VR Experience

The idea here was to explore VR as a medium of creating awareness and changing attitudes towards plastic consumption.

The focus was on secondary microplastics, they come from degradation of larger plastic trash through weathering. They account for 69–81% of the microplastics and are almost impossible to remove from the ocean.

Microplastics and their effects on the marine ecosystem.

Challenges in making people aware:

1. The concept of pollution, especially in case of marine micro-plastics, is highly abstract owing to the fact that it is invisible to most.
2. There is temporal distance between an act of consumption and its effect on the environment.
3. There is also a general lack of awareness of the scale of problem the implications of it.

VR as a medium

1. VR allows for complete immersion into a new environment which might not be possible to experience in real life, e.g under the ocean surface, in between the great pacific garbage patch etc.
2. VR can be used to put the viewer in a different perspective, like that of a fish for example.
3. If done well, the user experiences ‘presence’, the feeling of being in the Virtual Environment.

Improving environmental learning with VR

This is an experiment by Jeremy Bailenson of Stanford VHIL. This served as a foundation for the major conceptual part of this project. It immersed viewers in an underwater virtual environment and showed them the effects of ocean acidification from the perspective of organisms in the sea.

VR Experience about Ocean Acidification

Ideas

Narrative

I fixed on a narrative idea with interactive components. (Still under refinement)

Shot List

Sketchy storyboard

Experiments with Unity and Development

I am currently tweaking the concept and developing the project on Unity and expect do be done by some time next year.

One of the scenes which shows dead fish in a polluted ocean

Photos from Development

Coming Soon…