Menu
The Woman’s Tears Machine Gun is a gun to end all wars. With bullets filled with woman’s tears, it completely deflates the desire for violence and is the first gun created for peace.
Can we look beyond violence as a means of resolving conflict? I think we can recognize violence as an ancient and outmoded human drive that does not create solutions, though it does sew anger and vengeful thinking.
It is interesting that human sweat is also a primordial communications device and suggests that information in people’s sweat helped ancient humans better understand their surroundings.
In our modern world, where we mask and cover up sweating by adding perfumes etc., we often hide our natural smells and, perhaps, mask actual emotional states.
Is the same true of human tears?
A woman’s tears contain chemical substances and when a man sniffs these tears they diminish testosterone by 13%, therefore, a woman’s tears possess chemical signals used to biologically manipulate men, which make tears an evolutionary strategy for survival.
When men sniff the tears, their breathing rates, skin temperature, and testosterone levels sank and as high levels of testosterone can be associated with increased possibilities for aggression this is a significant discovery and means of reducing violence.
While some animals use scents and sprays to communicate chemically, such as mice, which use proteins to signal, it was not formerly known that humans expressed chemically with their tears. They have found that the region of the brain that is generally active and lights up when an individual is aroused, such as the fusiform gyrus and hypothalamus, was diminished when men were exposed to the woman’s tears.
When thinking about this it became apparent to me that tears are an ancient biological weapon and they also represent an actual lesson for non-violent deflationary ways of thinking about conflict resolution and reducing aggression. They may strangely allow the creation of an actual gun of peace.
The woman’s tears machine gun may be the safest gun on the planet as all it can do, is a cry for lost loved ones lost to war and gun violence, though it can also impact the dialogue surrounding the use of guns to resolve a conflict.
There are many different kinds of tears. Crying and weeping tears increase lacrimation because of intense emotional stress, anger, happiness, suffering, mourning, or physical pain. Emotional tears are often accompanied by reddening of the face, convulsive breathing, and at times spasms of the upper body
-Ken Rinaldo
For me, the work points to a primordial being, “human,” a layered animal with many ancient drives and communication abilities. The scent is an ancient activator of group action, sometimes surrounding fear or anger. Still, we understand that while anger and fear are great evolutionary strategies for group survival, they become more dangerous when powerful weapons are involved, especially with hair triggers.
Credits:
Design, concept, 3D modeling, and direction: Ken Rinaldo
Assistant: Trademark Gunderson
3D rapid prototyping v1: Alex Smith
Construction: Ken Rinaldo & Trademark Gunderson
Hardware: the Peristaltic pump is activated by rewired gun.
Raspberry Pi drives video loop.
Software: Trademark Gunderson
For a more in depth look check out Woman’s Tears Machine Gun on Ken Rinaldo’s website here