Plastic Gothic: Frankenstein, Art and the Microplastic Monster

The contamination of life with plastic pollution and humanity’s lethargic response to the problem is an unfolding terror: a story of Gothic horror unfolding in contemporary times. The power of Mary Shelley’s Gothic novel Frankenstein looms over the current terror of plastic pollution to encourage changes to the materials we create, use and discard. In Frankenstein, a monster was spawned in a process that desecrates the act of creating new life. Similarly, in my work of art Microplastics Found in Human Embryo, the depiction of an embryo is desecrated by plastic contamination. Frankenstein was unable to control his monster, and, denied empathy and love, the monster killed Frankenstein’s loved ones and haunted its creator’s soul. As microplastics are largely unseen, and increasing exponentially, they are becoming a modern monster. Microplastics can cross the placenta and the blood brain barrier, endangering the life and health of our children, potentially robbing us of progeny, and the future of humankind. Over the past two hundred years, Frankenstein has functioned as a shadowy mnemonic tale, haunting scientists and technologists by reminding them to consider the impacts of their creations. Shelley’s message, if applied to the current dangers of the “Age of Plastic”, might help us to clean up plastic pollution and embrace sustainable materials. In this spirit, Microplastics Found in Human Embryo reveals a monstrous idea, which aims to help awaken us from complacency and convince humanity to form a relationship which sustains all forms of life on Earth.

Frankenstein and plastic share several similarities. Both are human creations and uncontrollable.
They produce disastrous impacts and have come to haunt us. Plastics do not biodegrade. In a process that can take 500 to 1000 years, UV radiation can cause fragmentation into pieces known as microplastics. 1 Microplastics are increasingly found in animals, including humans, creating plastic hybrids and a grotesque expression of Gothic horror.
In the exhibition Disquiet: Ecological Anxieties and Transformations, artists Barbara Dover and Robyn Glade-Wright address the Microplastic Monster. Cape Specimen, for example, makes reference to the specimens displayed in museums that show the species of a particular era and place. It questions the type of specimens which might inhabit the natural world in the present era.
In 1863, a shortage of ivory impacted the production of billiard balls, prompting a New York billiard board manufacturer to advertise for a useful alternative. Two bothers living in New York acquired an English patent for a synthetic material that could be heat-moulded. It was a suitable substitute for ivory; cheap to manufacture, light weight, water resistant, and was a versatile and strong material.
Plastics are now found in products ranging from clothing to building materials along with the keys touched as this text was typed. The problem of plastic pollution has concerned scientists since the 1970s when they predicted the current pollution crisis and wrote, "It is unlikely that any marine birds remain uncontaminated by the synthetic pollutants". 7 Today, 90% of marine bird species have ingested plastic and 95% of the individuals within these species have been affected.
Sea animals and birds, when seeking out food, cannot distinguish plastic from other food sources. Plastic pollution has been found in around 600 species of marine organisms, including 100% of turtles, 59% of whales, and 36% of seals. 8 Catch of the Day was made after the death of a whale in Queensland. An autopsy found the whale had six metres of plastic in her stomach which was the cause of her death. By the year 2050, the weight of plastic in the ocean will be greater than the weight of all sea creatures. Almost all of the 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic ever created still exists and three-quarters of this is waste. Only 9% has been recycled, 12% incinerated and 79% is deposited in landfill or the environment. 9 Plastic discarded on land can be blown into drains where it is washed into rivers and carried to the sea. A whopping 70% of the plastic in the sea is deposited via rivers.
In the video, Undercurrent, turtles appear to swim in a plastic world. The video was projected onto a screen made with discarded plastic floats which were once used in fishing nets that had washed up on beaches in far north Queensland. The title of the video Undercurrent has a menacing tone suggesting the human altered world turtles now inhabit.
Inflated shows a turtle with an abdomen full of the same discarded plastic fishing floats.
The label for this work stated: When turtles eat plastic, they produce gas in an effort to digest the plastic. The gas makes the turtles float to the surface of the sea. The gas also means the turtles cannot dive down into the water to find food, so they starve to death and bake in the sun as they die. Plastic in the ocean is an unfolding tale of horror. In gothic horror stories, humans regard "the monsters that they encounter as abnormal, as disturbances of the natural order". 10  As some microplastics are less than half a millimetre in diameter, they cannot be seen without magnification. The Microplastic Monster has contaminated 83% of drinking water worldwide with 9 to 12 microplastic particles per litre. 14 The contamination rate in water in plastic bottles is higher than in tap water. Globally people buy one million plastic bottles each minute, of which 91% are used once before being discarded.
The  In Over-consumption, a large container ship appears to be cruising above a dead coral reef. Plastic harbours germs that can kill reef corals. The warming planet, along with cyclones and infestations by crown-of-thorns starfish has resulted in coral death and coral bleaching in 30% of the Great Barrier Reef. Global manufacturing, the use of fossil fuels and human consumption are implicated in urgent problems of climate change and environmental pollution.
Shelley's creation of the monster is "a de-formation of such magnitude that neither the process nor its product can be grasped" 17 and this can be said of the Microplastic Monster. The clock is ticking to find ways to replace plastic with materials that decompose, to develop systems to remove and recycle plastic from the sea, air and land. The gothic horror apparent in Frankenstein and the Microplastic Monster may help shake us from complacency and convince us to form a sustainable relationship with our planet.