GROUP ARTIST STATEMENT:  Our group collaborated to create a comedic video project that utilized art and science, to foster environmental awareness through a Mukbang, while imitating bird-like behavior and eating food with a heightened awareness of pollution’s impact on wildlife. Inspired by the style of video content popularly viewed on YouTube, we acted like birds eating food to portray how much pollution can affect the lives of birds. Other elements were included, such as using handmade bird masks and different types of food that represented what birds would typically eat. Additionally, various items were used to symbolize toxins found in birds’ natural habitats, including cookies marked as “LEAD,” which represents lead in the birds’ environment that comes from the various ways mankind has introduced materials that cause this toxin to enter birds’ homes. While the overall project was silly and light-hearted, it was still intended to inform viewers about the same serious environmental issues that we are trying to make people aware of today. I thought an important point was how much effort everyone put into finding ways to include as many details as possible to enhance the overall presentation, from the masks to the props to the location to the foods used. Everyone brought ideas to the project, and all those little details that everyone put forth contributed to how creative and complete the final video was. 

Through our work, we explored the relationship between art and science by looking at the effects of pollution (specifically lead in soil and plastic waste) on the birds that inhabit the area. To engage an audience that is less likely to listen to emotional accounts regarding the decline of bird populations, we used comedic elements and internet culture to deliver more meaningful messages. This was accomplished through the use of mukbang as the medium, which created a more modern setting for the project and gave a younger audience who are frequently connected to the internet a way to connect to the message. The entire experience demonstrated how something like friends eating together can be transformed into a significant event in the form of art, and how art itself can have a message when presented in a non-serious manner. Additionally, this experience demonstrated that there are ways for people to easily become aware of difficult or serious issues through the use of humor, making it easier for them to pay attention to them and retain them in their memories.

By working together, it was super cool to see how all of our brains and artistic styles came together to create this video. One thing we all agree on is that this topic, while being funny and silly in the video, is serious, and with the rise of data centers going up everywhere who knows how bad this is going to be in the future and hopefully this video provokes people to think and maybe one day we will all be able to build to courage to take actual action so animals like the seagull in our video stop dying.