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