Single Cell No. 1 Placemat
Single Cell No. 1 Placemat
More than anything, placemats influence the emotional tone of a meal. Think of a placemat as a frame around a painting. The food becomes the artwork, and the placemat enhances its presence. Without that frame, the composition can feel incomplete.
Thèria’s Single Cell No. 1 placemat is composed of the immortal jellyfishbrain representing our celebration of the very first single cell. The prokaryotic microorganisms, those simple, ancient beings without a nucleus from which all life emerged. This print honors the anaerobic bacteria that did not need oxygen to survive and the cyanobacteria and early plankton - the first photosynthesizers who helped shape Earth’s atmosphere and laid the groundwork for oxygen itself. It is a bow to the first particles of life who due to the improbable precision of temperature, gases, and elemental balance that made life possible, began their long journey. This is an ode to the brilliant manifestation of the creation of all life and to the billions of creatures who did not make it past the 5 mass extinctions and to those who did.
We have created our version of this celebration, as we humans continue to slowly evolve. It is a combination of the immortal jellyfish with a human brain and spine. The immortal jellyfish has a rare biological ability: when it’s injured, sick, or old, it doesn’t just die. It reverts its cells back to a younger state, turning itself into a baby polyp, a bit like a butterfly turning back into a caterpillar. Then it begins its life cycle again. And it can do this over and over by using the process called trans-differentiation where one type of cell transforms into another. A muscle cell could turn into a nerve cell, for example. In essence: Instead of aging, it resets. Instead of dying, it transforms. It doesn't avoid death, it loops time.
Single Cell No.1, or what we affectionally call the waltz of the Jelly brain is us at Thèria kissing the ground and saying thank you, to whatever being decided to dream us up, and celebrating all the ways all of us humans have dreamed up that being.
Details and care – wipe with damp cloth
Materials: Vegan PU leather
DIM: 19in x 15in
The augmented reality experience of Ode to the Single Cell No. 1 is a meditation on the mystery of transdifferentiating. Inspired by the immortal jellyfish, a creature capable of returning to its earliest cellular state, the piece reflects on transformation not as a way to escape death, but as a way of looping time itself.
Our vision suggests that this mystery belongs not only to the jellyfish, but to the human mind as well. While our physical bodies may pass, consciousness is eternal.
Through the AR experience, the immortal jellyfishbrain drifts and waltzes through the viewer’s field of awareness, moving gently and endlessly. It becomes a quiet meditation in motion, a living symbol of renewal and cyclical becoming.
The piece invites reflection on a profound idea: that life is not simply linear, but rhythmic, a constant movement, a constant song, reminding us to embrace the possibility of transformation and the deeper sense of immortality within consciousness itself.
