Saturday, November 20, 2010

Life Clock and Menstruation Clock

Check out this art from Brigitte Coremans. She's got two different things going on here.


The first, Menstruation Clock, records a woman's daily temperature and records it on a seismograph-like chart each day. The result is a pretty neato fertility chart.

The second, Life Clock, is a series of beads. Each bead represents another egg that could be potentially fertilized. Each month, a bead moves from one side to the other. There are 500 "eggs" in this project--the colors change as the series progresses to show the gradual change from young to old, in a way.


Says Coremans:

"During the embryonic development of a feminine fetus, the egg cells are formed. In the twentieth pregnancy week there are approximately seven million eggs. During the further development in the uterus, a robust number goes lost, through which by the time of birth 'only' one million eggs remain. At the moment a women starts menstruation there are 400.000 left. Each menstruation cycle around 400 eggs die and only one (or two in case of a twin) will be released and can be fertilized. This process will repeat itself for an average of 40 years. "

1 comments:

kate said...

this is amazing. i love the idea of a "more feminine" (or, at the very least, body-centric) way of telling and marking time.

 

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