i think i’ve pretty much cried everyday this past week (in the name of design).. i have been looking for and embracing it when it comes so its definitely more times than normal. i ordered some litmus paper which finally came on wednesday but have yet to actually have it on me when the tears come (i’m presently trying to insert a design intervention here) which is based on the “how useful are your tears?” idea i presented in prototypes presentation.
so the area im developing at the moment is expanding this whole tear factory “brand” or umbrella and designing around the idea that a daily cry is good for you and will make you a better and more healthier person. i guess im trying to design or redesign crying.
a subject i was preparing to move away from (but in light of a recent event i am returning to) was the grief aspect of crying. i do still intend on exploring the other areas like joyful crying, but i feel bereavement is when most of us are likely to cry.
so for a while i had been thinking about tears as an ingredient in food (heston blumenthal watch out) but thought it needed to be developed more. some of the chemicals you find in tears (sodium, potassium) are basically salt or salt tasting so thinking back to an experiment from school involving evaporating sea water which leaves you with salt, i began thinking you could do the same with tears. this adds another level of meaning where a period of time when the water part of the tear naturally evaporates and goes someway towards visualising grief evolving and potentially “getting easier” to live with.
so… every time i see jade goody at the moment she is crying her eyes out.. so as well as leaving a multi-million pound fortune to her children, couldn’t she also leave them salt from her tears to grit their pathways, or kill the slugs, or to clean their dirty plates in a dishwasher? this also fits back into my afterlife thread that has been running through everything i’ve done this year.
c-c-c-coool
jack, you should read up about tears. they can’t be manufactured, have a higher boiling point than water and a lower freeezing point too and all sorts of properties that if we COULD make them, would be really useful in loads of applications. at least that’s what i’ve heard.
hiya… having tried to find an naswer to the exact same question i came to find your theories on the matter…however, i have not yet found whether we can or cannot use the salt in our tears for our meals, but thanks for sharing… i thought i was the only mad woman around to think of such things!