Sea Sick Sea

The Glass Challenge design process in this course started with the researcher Kaisa Västis's topic Fill your glass from the lake. We were discussing the human impact on natural freshwater and landscapes. I put my focus mainly on agriculture and the excess nutrient flow to the lakes and sea.

Human has transformed the natural landscapes through agricultural activity intentionally and unintentionally.  All the fertilizers and minerals we use in agriculture end up in water channels and via channels to rivers and via rivers to the final destination, to the lake or the sea. 

In our case, the example is the Baltic Sea where eutrophication has damaged the ecosystem. That causes algae growth which prevents underwater plants to get enough sunlight and the plants eventually will die. We see only what is happening on the surface but not what is below the surface. The glass vase has shaped by stones from the Baltic Sea, then filled with seawater to make the invisible, visible to all. 

The stones I used in shaping glass were from the Vanhankaupunginlahti area. Vanhankaupunginlahti is a eutrophic bay, the water quality has been affected by numerous factors over the years, such as domestic wastewater and nutrients from cultivated lands washing down the river Vantaanjoki. Wastewater from the Rajasaari wastewater treatment plant was drained into Vanhankaupunginlahti until the end of the 1980s. Vanhankaupunginlahti is still a very eutrophic water area.