Memento Mori Maximum

So I've been working on this pieve pretty intently. After a few weeks of wailing on metal, molding and carving resin, and figuring out/assembling electronics, the piece is done.

Before I throw some of the pictures up on here, I'll explain the piece a bit.

As some of you may remember, I experienced what I perceived as the Memento Mori Maximum a while back. A memento mori, to review, is something that reminds us that we will die. It comes from a Roman practice during war when a hero was followed by a servant that reminded him over and over to celebrate today because tomorrow he will die. It was later adopted by Catholics during the dark ages.

Well, this Memento Mori Maximum occured when I was cleaning out the Buffalo State Metals Studio acid cabinet, and discovered a container full of ferric chloride, with large chlorine crystals growing inside. The beauty absolutely struck me, but then the realization occured that I must destroy these toxic crystals.

This event really did change my view and perspective on things (it also helped that it followed a deadly concussion). To see these crystals in their utmost toxicity thriving, and to realize that it is my job to whipe them out, this was shocking. But in a final middle finger, the neutralization of these crystals caused a color-changing and moving cloud in the water. This was then followed up by a shocking realization on my own place in the world when I talked to Steve Sarcino (professor of Metals at Buffalo State for those of you not from here) about the whole thing. I said "I realized I had to kill the crystals, even though I know they aren't technically alive." He replied "According to us biological beings, they aren't alive. But don't we have a bias on the definition of alive?" This absolutely blew my mind. In Anthropology, we are taught to remain relative and unbiased at all times when it comes to dealing with other people. But the idea of biological relativity absolutely blew cultural relativity out of the water in the scale of the universe.

Since this whole event was so important to me, it only made sense to display it in my work.

For this piece, I chose to utilize the idea of a thurible. A thurble is the hanging, swinging incense burner used it masses. I chose this because when I was growing up (not that I'm not still), I was an altar server (shocking, I know. I actually wanted to be a priest.) My favorite things to serve were life events, seeing as altar servers were paid for it. On Wednesday, I'd see a Baptism, on Friday I'd serve a wedding, on Sunday, I'd serve a funeral. Week in and week out, I saw the circle of life (LION KING!) take place, and the one standard part of this constant repetition of birth, life, and death was my task of preparing the thurible for each.

So enough of the talk, here's some pictures.

This is the thurible after the pieces were all fabricated.

This is the thurible after I carved the positives of the crystals that would be molded and cast in place.

This is the thurible with the lights on. The color is a little scewed. It looks like it's entirely brass, but it isn't. It's copper and brass.

This is an animation of the crystals changing color. I did all of the electronics myself. The purpose of the lights is to promote the interaction between the incense smoke and the light.

So there we go.

See you space cowboy....