Revealing the Invisible: Marine Plastic Waste and its Effects in Science-Inspired Visual Art

Abstract The aim of the paper is to explore how science-inspired visual artworks can foreground the effects of marine plastic waste, challenging the perception of discarded plastic things as inert objects. Furthermore, this research focuses on two related issues: first, the invisibility of microplastics waste to the human eye; second, the sense of distance between everyday terrestrial practices and plastic in the ocean. This paper shows that the artistic visualizations of scientific knowledge about plastic waste behavior in the media of photography and installation can reveal the hidden connections between the materiality of plastic and the human body.