Pencils made from cremated humans
Artist Nadine Jarvis fabricates pencils from carbon left over of cremated humans — it’s part of a larger “research project into post mortem.” She notes that “240 pencils can be made from an average body of ash – a lifetime supply of pencils for those left behind.”
Via: BoingBoing, Related: Release – messages from the deceased, Biopresence – Human DNA in Trees.
This post seems totally off topic. But, somehow I feel this is nextnature related although I don’t know how to put in words..
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In my opinion this post fits perfectly in the series. Next Nature is all about finding – but especially creating new resources, to creatively enhance and extend life, both in economic sense as well as ecologically. Producing new consumergoods from used consumergoods is part of the process that will help us find the meaning of Next Nature: “the next way of living”.
Further: putting body’s under the ground uses a lot of space. Burning them gives a lot of waste (a little less if you use the Ecopod http://www.nextnature.net/research/?p=969 ). Making pencils out of a human body is only a small step to take advantage of the many deaths. I am still waiting for Nadine Jarvis to turn the deceased into spaceships, sattelite communication devices or energy if you will; pencils are so 1900!
Reminds me of artist Jill Magid, who is going to turn herself into a diamond when she dies: http://www.jillmagid.net/AutoPortrait.htm
Thanks for explaining Arnoud. Myself I like the spiritual value of the cremated person pencil. Nice idea to be able to write a letter with grandma’s ashes… I would think twice before I would write something stupid with grandma’s ashes… I find it interesting that in nextnature spiritual matters can become physical, graspable even.. I also like the diamand project commented by Rolf a lot. Other examples are the Biojewellery (http://www.nextnature.net/research/?p=33) and Biopresence project (http://www.nextnature.net/research/?p=288) which i added to the post to give it more context. Any ideas for a new tag we could introduce for these ‘physicalspiritualities’?