Last breath? A Moscow artist contemplates death with a wearable mask organ

It looks somewhere between a gas mask and a replica of miniature church organ pipes, but the latest project from Moscow-based artist and researcher, Dmitry Morozov, is in fact a meditation on the concept of death.

Morozov, AKA ::vtol::, has created a wearable mask organ, designed for a person who has no other recourse but to outsource their breathing to an instrument external to their own body. The “passive instrument” was conceived by Morozov “during an emotional upheaval” concerning his own health.

“The operating principles of the object is fairly simple — the exhaled air (its pressure and flow rate) activates the generative process, which depends on the exhalation parameters and is managed by the air movement in the organ,” Morozov says in his artist’s statement.

In Morozov’s video, in which he uses the instrument, high pitch noises interrupt the haunting sound of his breath through the pipes.