How design and biology can uncover the beauty of tears

if you could trap a moment of a painful

sorrow

or a deep joy in what form would you

like to keep it

we are all emotional beings and tears

are a crucial part of our emotional

moments

now remember the last time you cry next

to someone

i don’t even have to ask if you did you

sure did but remember how did you react

then

most of us will often reflexively hide

our tears

wipe our face with the first thing that

gets our hands on

and that’s why today i want to show you

why you should not hide your tears

but rather read them proudly as a totem

of your humanity

hi everyone i’m yvonne designer and

researcher

and today i want to talk about talk

about emotions and tears

but i will not talk about myself i will

talk about the findings of my work

and research i started to explore

emotions and tears out of my research

curiosity

and today i would like all of you to get

to know yourself a little bit better

after this speech

together with you i will also like to

provoke some of the

post-social norms as a person who loves

to ask question why

i want to shake the unwritten social

rules that often

makes us feel uncomfortable in our own

skin and we don’t even know how to

explain why

moreover i want to show you how easy is

to re-examine

the existing social values they’re a

part of a construct

that distance us from ourselves and

ultimately from society

but let me go back to the beginning why

emotions

and white tears my deeper acquaintances

with years began

during my thesis project where as a

designer i research biology and human

body

more precisely i research relationship

between biology technology and human

body

during that process my teardrop find

itself in a test tube

in the hands of a colleague from a

faculty of microbiology

after a day of incubation my colleague

invited me to take a look at my tear

through a microscope

as i was looking my tier 2 microscope i

realized the beauty and power of tears

i immediately knew my task is to show

the beauty and poetry of tears

and so throughout the process i

uncovered the potential of tears i have

never thought of before

this research showed me how powerful

unique

and complex we are as human beings but

also how fragile

and vulnerable we are at the same time

and that is why i decided to design a

wearable

that will turn tears which we often

stereotypically recognize as a

weaknesses

into our strength and most powerful

shield acting

as a totem of our humanity

but in order to do that i’d had to get

to know a tears a little bit better

namely tear starter substances consisted

of series of minerals enzyme

proteins which turn tears into a

superfluid

among all these components there is one

protein called lysozyme

lysozyme is one very powerful protein

also known as the antibiotic of a body

i felt so in love with this protein its

capabilities

and the very context in which it lives

in a human body that i just had to do

something with it

so throughout the research i discovered

that lysozyme has one interesting

possibility

i found that lysozyme is capable of

simulating growth

of precious metal particles more

precisely

it can simulate the growth of gold on

the particles

after that discovery i knew i wanted to

make something that will use these

properties

and turn our tears and emotions and the

product

our tears into gold both metaphorically

and literally and so

with the help of scientists chemists and

biologists

we build a prototype that turns our

emotions

into gold creating a totem of our

humanity

weakness and happiness because we all

cry that’s a fact

and apart from biological benefits of

tears they’re also a powerful social

signal

to the rest of us so i wonder why do we

hide them

and even from those who we call friends

to be able to talk more openly about

emotions we need to look at them

agnostically

that is we must not attach any social

norms to them

the best examples are the kids they

laugh scream cry

all before our eyes without a shred of

shame or embarrassment

yet those same children as they start to

grow up

start to impose embrace the imposed

social norms

and as they’re growing up their tears

cease to be so acceptable

and that’s and that’s how we brought one

of the most primitive and most humane

way of expression emotions

into a taboo

it is this social construct and

phenomenon emotions as taboo

that made me explore this topic more

deeply and try to show

how we look at some things blindly and

as a human beings

we should not be ashamed of our tears

and emotions

during the process of turning tears into

gold there is another component

that is interesting and that is time

how long does it take us to cope over

the last of a loved one

how long does it take us to cope with a

new reality that has befallen us

how long does it actually get to turn

tears into gold

one thing is for sure the human body

needs time to heal

when we talk about this project and in

general while designing the biology

i find time to be a unique quality of

biology and

living things in case of this variable

the process from the first tier

to the growth of gold on the particles

lasts from minimum to five days

to more than three months from this

point when the first year comes into

contact with the variable that is why

this variable

is designed to work with the body it

follows our rhythm

and pace of our recovery because we go

through difficult times

what we often need in order to recover

is what we think we miss the most

and that is time these biological

performances

allow us to design artifacts that work

with the balance

and rhythm of our body while not

imposing its own pace

but to go back to the question i asked

at the outset if you could trap a moment

of a painful sorrow

or a deep joy in what form would you

like to keep it

i will ask you to dedicate yourself to

that topic

and the next time you’re wonderful and

you cry to trap that

moment into a picture a song

a sculpture something you’ll be able to

give to someone

and thus open yourself forever as my

dear friend will say

friends are guardians of our weaknesses

and we shouldn’t be afraid of sharing it

with them

and for the end you probably expect me

to leave you with some wisdom

though i don’t have any i know what i

would like for you in the future

the next time you’re wonderable and cry

to not hide your tears

nor your emotions but rather wear them

proudly

as a shield and totem of your humanity

thank you very much