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About Me

Jae Rhim Lee is a visual artist and designer whose living units, furniture, wearables, and recycling systems propose unorthodox relationships between the mind/body/self and the built and natural environment. She has been a consultant for the City of New Orleans’ disaster recovery office, a lecturer in visual art at MIT, and has studied art, permaculture, psychology, and the natural sciences. Lee is a recipient of a 2009 Creative Capital Foundation Grant, a 2010 Grant from the Institut fur Raumexperimente/Universitaet der Kunste Berlin, and a 2011 MAK-Schindler Scholarship. Lee is currently a Research Fellow in the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology in Cambridge, MA and an artist in residence at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles, CA.

Location:
United States, Oakland, CA
Current organization:
Infinity Burial Project
Past organizations:
MIT, MAK Center for Art + Architecture
Current role:
Research Fellow
Gender:
Female
I am:
Artist, Brainstormer, Change Agent, Concerned citizen, Connector, Consultant, Designer, Explorer, Foodie, Idea generator
Associations:
Decompiculture Society
My website links:
Personal Website, Infinity Burial Project
Universities:
Wellesley College, MIT
TED conferences attended:
TEDActive 2013, TEDGlobal 2011
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More About Me

An idea worth spreading

Decompiculture (coined by entomologist Timothy Myles): Humans cultivating decomposing organisms for food production, waste processing, and more.

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Your wackiest ideas: rare, medium rare, and well-done. Exploration. Transcending disciplines. Your best meal ever.

Comments

  • TEDCred score: +51.40 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

  • +2

    A reply on Talk: Jae Rhim Lee: My mushroom burial suit

    Nov 2 2012: Thanks for your comments, I agree and am experimenting with the design of the suit, which is critical for the project and its reception, beyond straightforward aesthetics. Stay tuned!
  • +4

    A reply on Talk: Jae Rhim Lee: My mushroom burial suit

    Aug 10 2012: The talk clearly states that 5000 lbs of mercury (I never claimed 500 tons) are emitted from cremation, and I will add that this is in the US alone. The United Nations Environmental Program (see ref below) says 27 tonnes (about 27,000 kg or 60,000 lbs) of mercury are emitted via cremation worldwide.
    http://www.unep.org/hazardoussubstances/Portals/9/Mercury/Documents/Paragraph29Study/Final%20Report%20Para29_5%20Nov%202010.pdf
  • +5

    A reply on Talk: Jae Rhim Lee: My mushroom burial suit

    Aug 9 2012: I would not accuse someone of lying when your own counter argument is based on false claims. The EPA does not regulate crematoria because corpses are not considered solid waste. The EPA states this outright on their own website. http://publicaccess.supportportal.com/link/portal/23002/23012/Article/21238/What-are-the-EPA-regulations-for-crematories-and-pathological-incinerators

  • A comment on Talk: Jae Rhim Lee: My mushroom burial suit

    Jun 1 2012: max golding, the reference is right on. in fact, the project was spurned by a reading of TMT in a psychology of self seminar. the body, which figures so heavily in our sense of self, also symbolizes our mortality--we eat, we shit, we die, we decay, like other physical beings--and therefore becomes the focal point of our efforts to deny death. thanks for the reference!
  • +3

    A comment on Conversation: How does life/death manifest itself in the human brain? Is brain death the ultimate end stage of life?

    Mar 8 2012: The current brain-centered medical definition of death seems outdated given how our bodies and definitions of self have undergone such radical changes (e.g. posthuman/cyborgian bodies) since this definition took hold. (In 1968, a committee at Harvard Med School defined brain death as death, and this was in part a response to the first human heart-to-heart transplant in Africa.)

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