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Buro-Mieso-Cabinet

Tokonoma inspired cabinet for Arne Hendriks' Buro Miso project to be used by an imaginary 17th century Dutch diplomat in Japan looking to exchange Miso.

Conduit-ready-made oil laps

Pewter-cast snail finial

Great Oxidation Event

Rebar and silver crown holding a phrenite center piece

Steel chain sash holding a brass and silver set hematite across the body representing a liver.

Speer and oil lamp hybrid in tool steel and silver

Only few distant descendants of the organisms that possibly once dyed the primordial soup purple survive today. They are known as haloarchaea and live in small numbers in refuge in almost saturated salt lakes. Performing the most rudimentary form of photosynthesis, absorbing yellow and green wavelengths, they must have been extremely successful at the time, being the only consumer of sunlight. Unfortunately for them, the niche they left untouched -the entire blue and red spectrum of light-gave opportunity to some proto-algae (cyanobacteria) to profit of the same almost unlimited source of energy. Counterintuitively this bacteria could afford to not only reduce carbon dioxide, but excrete the highly energetic oxygen without even metabolizing it. This opulent careless use of resource has since then -approximately two billion years ago- not without fluctuation, but without interruption filled earths atmosphere with a fuel almost all life since relies upon. In enabling, quite literally like Prometheus, other non-immortal life forms with this sudden availability of oxidization they set of a chain of mutation leading over multi-cellular life to “consciousness” and “culture”. The spoils, we the people, gained through this gift of fire and life, stand as a reminder that blood-sacrifice while not always justifiable may be a simple necessity. Or if not necessary at the very least natural. When cyanobacteria excreted its gift,change was not immediately “positive”. This planet was virtually void of reactive substances since during the beginning, in the Hadean eon everything burned up already long before things started living. Early life had to rely mostly on ionizing radiation and lightning strikes for their productivity. As would be expected, the introduction of oxygen into ananaerobic world, obliterated its inhabitants similarly to one might imagine their lung rusting in a cloud of radioactive bleach. This was the first mass extinction, known as the great oxidation event. And great it was. It was not the last one, many would follow, one of those might be going on right now. While one might want to express sympathy for these creatures, it should be said that their death was one of pride. They died with their niche, their trade, themselves. The rule of cyanobacteria stands to this day as the baseline of nourishment, but that does not mean that it never experienced mutiny. Adapted predators were frivolous enough to not only breathe the provided air, but directly prey on their benefactors. Eventually in some cases common ground would be found in cooperation and symbiosis. Maybe through exceptional opportunism, but more likely just by random chance, our emperor and wellspring, has been reduced to a simple organelle inside the body of an insurrectionist. Part revolutionary part co-conspirator, this new generation would carry on the torch of dominance and began colonizing uncharted territories. No longer relying on the oceans structural support for their flaccid bodies, they started erecting themselves as monuments of their own dominance on the previously uninhabited “land”. If it was populated before their arrival, any trace of those living there was eradicated. Their following was vast,many, invertebrates and vertebrates flourish under their guidance. Those charismatic creatures now populating sea and land -some more, some less successfully- did what they could to find their worthwhile role. Even if most of them did not amount to much, they at least laid the groundwork for possibly the first species to challenge the status quo of biological existence since the Paleoproterozoic era. We the people, through the immense force unleashed by the unholy unity of carcass and excrement,may have the power to move this world one step closer to perfect absorption - absolutely efficient black. Life could be more than combustion.