Project Background

In the 1940’s Beautiful House magazine, a map of Synthetica was printed to educate the public about the Synthetic World we were entering.  In the light of the Pacific Garbage Patch, we come to this with a sense of irony!  However, plastics were born in a fervour of excitement.  The end of poverty was anticipated alongside a cessation of exploitation of the natural world (the slaughter of elephants for ivory billiard balls was a major concern). 

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Synthetica is a fractured and poetic sung narrative telling a story full of heady discoveries by industrial chemists, consumer crazes fuelled by the dawn of advertising, the facilitation of our easy living, plastics as a massive aid in the face of poverty and the face of environmental catastrophe…....  the light and the dark.   Given these polarities, where are we heading?  The question of plastics touches upon our place in the natural world, our evolution in the digital age and well beyond.