These algorithmically designed masks explore life, death, and rebirth while blurring the line between biology and manufacturing.
From the gold-plated visage of Tutankhamen to the plaster casts in vogue among dying Victorians in the 19th Century, cultures around the world have created death masks for millennia as a way to immortalize the dead. Now, Neri Oxman–MIT’s biologically-obsessed designer and architect is futuristically flipping death masks on her head with Vespers, three series of five death masks that abstractly explore the transition between life and death of five imaginary martyrs.