Post-mordial : esoteric embodiment
Name
1003321909-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
25.45 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
0cf1ffc0dfd0ddbe150c84e77f2e064e
Author(s)
Menos, Kristopher G. (Kristopher Gerard)
Advisor(s)
William O'Brien Jr.
Date Issued
2017
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
This thesis speculates that common funerary practices do not reflect a wide enough range of contemporary cultural attitudes towards religion, spirituality, and mortality. As human beings increasingly embrace the paradigms of bioinformatics and digital fabrication, this thesis proposes that alternative funerary practices will arise to reflect these cultural attitudes, with individuals taking on increasing levels of both personal and collaborative agency in the design of their own memorial artifacts, and those of their loved ones. Through a series of speculative models, this thesis projects a scenario in which a group of humans embrace their corporeal materiality and its internalized information as precious and sacred, to produce memorial artifacts that are constructed from their own biomatter, and that formally encode streams of genetic information. The artifacts become esoteric 'post-mordial' emodiments of human being, existing as totems of their lineage, and 'momento mori' for remaining humans.
Description
Thesis: S.M. in Architecture Studies (Architectural Design), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, 2017.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Page 180 blank.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 172-176).
Subjects
Architecture.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture
Terms of Use
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