Kaohsiung City Yingming Junior High School—Yingming Arts and Fun: Rebirth Lab—A Parallel Dimension of Waste

The course design stems from reflections on stress and the environmental material cycle. Starting with students' daily anxieties (exam papers), it introduces environmentally related courses through pulp remolding and the textural transformation of waste materials (bottle caps, shuttlecocks). It guides students through the process of observation, deconstruction, and reconstruction, such as the reconstruction of recycled paper fibers, the pixel color matching of bottle cap fragments, and the structural weaving of shuttlecocks and pipe cleaners. Students experience the refinement of craftsmanship in hands-on activities, understand that imperfection can also show unique beauty, establish the concept of material sustainability, and showcase the results in a curated exhibition at the school anniversary celebration.

Next semester, we plan to incorporate disaster prevention discussions, guiding students through the history of environmental disasters to understand the contents of disaster preparedness kits. We will also use AI technology to create visual narratives of real-life campus safety incidents. This will elevate aesthetic appreciation from personal emotional healing (rebirth) to a broader concept of collective campus protection. By addressing disaster prevention issues, we will combine aesthetics with environmental issues to create innovative outcomes that integrate diverse perspectives.