The world of artistic expression comes in many forms and uses many items that might not be seen as artistic by the average person. The latest instance of this comes from the artist Serge Belo, who found a way to use 15,000 liters of rainwater and 66,000 plastic cups to create a unique mosaic of a baby still in its mother’s womb.
A video of the entire process was produced, with 100 volunteers taking over what looks to be a hangar to fill each cup with rainwater over a 62-hour span. In order to produce the artistic effect that was sought, many of the cups have had vegetable dye (a total of one kilogram) added to them, producing an array of different colors, such as red, orange and yellow.
Those volunteers are then shown carefully placing cups on the floor in methodical fashion over a distance of 5.2 kilograms, with time-lapse photography helping to show the precise detail required to capture the image of the fetus.
Belo’s thinking behind this project stemmed from a concern over the global water supply, with the food coloring symbolically representing how impure the water is in certain areas of the world.
That lack of access to clean water is evidenced by the fact that more than one billion people in developing countries don’t have access to water, and more than 2.7 billion experience a shortage for one month out of the year.
The potential for this issue becoming even worse can be seen by the prediction that a decade from now, two-thirds of the world population (which would currently be just under 4.9 billion people) may be struggling to find sources of water.
The irony of the water issue is that while approximately 70 percent of Earth is covered by water, only two or three percent of that is considered clean enough to drink. In the latter case, two-thirds of that water is in remote glacier areas that are difficult to reach.
The combination of Belo’s artistic endeavor and the concern over the water issue has registered with many people, with more than 7.4 million people having viewed the two-minute video since it was first posted online in March 2013.