Project team: Lieyah Dagan, Fiona Duerr, Seiyoung Jang, Crystal Lee, Arianna Ninh
Course: Critical Practices, fall 2017
Tearrarium is a device that allows your tears to transform and flourish into new life. Many people cry as a cathartic method for dealing with issues of mental health, in moments when it can be difficult to communicate feelings to others or understand how to help oneself. The concept behind Tearrarium is to provide comfort in these moments: as an individual weeps, they can put on a pair of tear-sensing sunglasses that activate a planter to water their plants. Engaging with nature can be a restorative and therapeutic experience, and for this reason, the design of the planter itself is meant to mimic the appearance and environment of a landscape.
The watering system, meanwhile, has been designed to release water in drops that mimic the appearance of tears. Here, an individual can not only tend to this miniature landscape by crying, but they also must wipe the planter’s tears to make sure it does not overflow. In this way, individuals can tend to their own sadness as they tend to their gardens; by learning to care for their own plants, the crier could indirectly comfort themselves. As time moves on, the planter changes with an individual’s emotional state; plants can grow, drown, or starve, and as a result, Tearrarium can become a portrait of one’s own mental state. This artifact can become a method for displaying and visualizing mental health, giving it a tangible and public face.
Want to learn more about Tearrarium and its designers? Check out: