I am interested in the differences and similarities between physical and virtual reality. The influences that these two realities are having on the notion of self, I find more and more interesting as I continue to investigate the relationship between person and object. By investigating the qualities of the physical object, I am beginning to have a fuller understanding of the qualities that make up our physical reality. Having a deeper understanding of physicality and how we interact and experience it, may contribute to our understanding of the virtual reality which is also influencing our notion of self but in a different manner. Physical reality is based on basic states of being and dimension. We know this based on our development of the senses. Our notion of self is linked to physicality and has been the basis of our evolution. Virtual reality on the other hand possess qualities similar albeit abstracted from our notion of the physical. And yet, I exist virtually regardless of dimension, material, and form. I predict that knowing one’s self will be influenced by these immaterial qualities in ways yet foreseen. The representation of the object, both in physical and virtual formats shown concurrently, may create a transformative experience of understanding this ambiguous identity for the interactive viewer. The object serves as relational device for understanding ourselves existing in dual realities.
Understanding of the physical world and our notion of self in it, is described from an art perspective by Ellen H. Johnson in Modern Art and the Object written in 1976.
“By Isolating and concentrating on single objects from his daily environment (a flower in the garden, a toaster in the kitchen) the artist creates an image which may be an intensification of his experience - of the mysterious power of simple things, of the wonder with which he regards the world - but which he has brought into an entirely different state of being from the source object. These created objects ‘lead their own lives’ and find their meaning in the realm of shape, line, colour, texture, volume, plane.”
According to Nathan Shedroff, author of Experience Design, the meaning in experiences directly relates to objects and how people interpret them.
“People find meaning in experiences and things based on a wide variety of personal values. That people find meaning in things is, perhaps, the only constant that can be relied upon. To this end, it’s important to design experiences so that audiences or participants can find meaning in them by making connections to their own lives and values - that is, if we want these experiences to have lasting impact.”
Shedroff explains further, “Meaning is often built by objects and experiences that allow us to grow or experience intense emotions. Not every experience should, necessarily, have this as a goal but, often, the distinction of a successful or memorable experience is that it transforms us or makes us feel something. Artifacts of an experience (physical objects from the experience that serve as reminders of what we experienced, such as photographs and souvenirs) become valuable to us because they serve to remind us and help us relive those experiences.”
Acknowledging the importance of experiencing and interacting with physical objects, things made from material, can be understood by the concept of entropy. Based on the second law of thermodynamics, a foundation of physics, and according to psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in The Evolving Self, this law states that “every system tends to decay into simpler forms. Mountain ranges turn into desert plains, burning stars freeze, great geniuses turn into indifferent ash.” Because we know decay and death, we know the meaning of objects in their present moment. This natural process, i.e. metamorphosis, is what sustains our material consciousness, i.e. connection, with the object in the present. Our experience and interaction with an object in the here and now, is important because we know that in time, the same object will no longer have the same qualities or characteristics; possible, it might even be destroyed beyond recognition - fire damage for instance. Richard Sennett in The Craftsman states that we are engaged with material through the awareness that it’s form is a temporary moment in time. Objects have meaning because we know that we have limited moments of experiencing them in their present forms.
Evocative Objects, the book edited by Sherry Turkle explores the notion of loss, whether of object or person, when referring to the work of psychotherapist Sigmund Freud. She states, “The psychodynamic tradition - in its narrative of how we make objects part of ourselves - offers a language for interpreting the intensity of our connections to the world of things, and for discovering the similarities in how we relate to the animate and inanimate. In each case, we confront the other and shape the self.” Turkle suggests that physical reality, “the world of things” is intrinsically related to our sense of self through interaction, “confront(ation)” with objects being “the other.”
As stated by Dr. Thomas Klee, the study of how we relate to objects, “is a psychodynamic approach to understanding human behavior, development, relationships, psychopathology and psychotherapy.” Similarly, transitional objects also play a part in the process of psychotherapy. In her essay The Rolling Pin, the psychologist Susan Pollak uses an except form Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past to suggest that, transitional “objects have a profoundly healing function.”
“But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more substantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest, and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.”
Proust is describing the awareness of his senses having experienced a small cookie called a madeleine and reflecting on this process of his mind. An object of his childhood, that when experienced through smell and taste, after what is implied having been many years, bring a full recollection of consciousness through memory. As he states, “...the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me...” Pollak suggests that through the power of the senses, our interaction with objects establish strong memories associated with meaning with that particular object and the engaged individual.
Material objects also have qualities that go beyond our identities based on memory. Their very physicality gives us tangible information that digitally based information forms do not. Turkle describes architect Susan Yee’s essay The Archive, as a “narrative (that) captures an anxiety that digital objects will take us away from the body and it’s ways of understanding.”
While studying the physical paper blueprints, drawings, and handwritten notes of Le Corbusier in Paris in the mid-1990’s, Yee becomes intimately aware of the designer’s successes and frustrations. This experience of not only witnessing, but touching the smudges, fingerprints, and dirt that these articles held, encourages her own identification as an architect. A meaning becomes established through the sensibilities of the physical object. After days of pouring over these inspiring objects, the curator of La Foundation Le Corbusier informs Yee that they are archiving everything into a digital database. In one single measure, the tactile information that made Yee’s experience with the physical objects so meaningful is erased. Devoid of it’s dirtiness, texture and dimension, the digital process has turned the object of presence and time into an irregular image accessible where ever and when ever by anyone. When the archive became digitized, Yee experienced a loss to her connection to Le Corbusier. Experiencing the work digitally, Yee says, “It made the drawings feel anonymous.” Furthermore, the digital experience made Yee feel anonymous.
Turkle compares Yee’s plight to the work of philosopher, Jacques Derrida. He states the converting of the physical to the virtual is “transforming the entire public and private space of humanity.” Turkle explains, “...any archive is a selection of material that erases what has been excluded - the digitized archive goes a step further. Its virtuality insures another level of abstraction between its users and what has been selected.”
As the object loses it’s object-ness when virtually transformed, it also changes in meaning for us. As a maker of objects, I have intrinsic knowledge of the qualities that make them, that of material and form. If these are the same conditions that define our objects of identity, and furthermore our physical reality, how is the virtual transference of these qualities to be understood? Near the end of her essay, Yee acknowledges that digital technologies have instructional opportunities, yet subjectively, they pose larger psychological issues concerning identity. I feel that the closing questions of Yee’s essay stem from an anxiety that I too share.
“...what will these technologies do to us? How will they affect the way we feel, see ourselves, and see design? What will (technologies that lack time and place) do to our emotional understanding of the human process of design? What rituals might we invent to recover the body’s intimate involvement with these new traces of human imagination? Will we be able to feel the human connection through digital archives? Will we care?”
Psychologist Jean Piaget says, “objects help us think about such things as number, space, time, causality and life” due to which, “ our learning is situated, concrete, and personal.” Conversely, virtual reality is not based on the conditions which we have come to know and be defined by our physical reality. Time, dimension, form and space are the formative physical states of being and therefor of self. The things which we refer to as objects in virtual reality, are formless entities which have put a stopper in our ultimate notion of time - the inevitability of death. To know death is to know life. To know space is to know form. Virtual reality is an abstraction of our natural sensibilities. The impact of the virtual, will have profound psychological influences on our notion of self. Proper transitionary experiences through relatable but virtually influenced objects, may be able to bridge the dual-reality gap which is part of our ever evolving minds. I plan on showing this gap for my practicum. By creating an interactive experience that is conditional to the idea of one object but shown in multiple physical and virtual forms at once. The viewers will be participants in some manner, whether hands on or not I am not sure. What I am interested in is getting the idea across that one’s presence influences perspective and therefore, awareness of what an object is.
Bibliography
Bernard, Edina. Modern art, 1905-1945. English-language ed. London: Chambers, 2004. Print.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. The Evolving Self. Harper Perennial, 1994. Print.
---. Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life. Basic Books, 1998. Print.
Derrida, Jacques. “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression.” Diacritics 25.2 (1995): 9. Print.
Johnson, Ellen. Modern art and the object : a century of changing attitudes. New York: Harper & Row, 1976. Print.
Turkle, Sherry. Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. The MIT Press, 2007. Print.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Art, Craft and Design Theory
As I am not interested in the differences, but the influences that art, craft, and design have on each other, I can conclude that they are one thing. They are the psychological conditions which have created human kind’s notion of being within a physical reality. I can consider these three seemingly different aspects of making as one, because the physical world their objects make up, can now be clearly defined by it’s opposite. Also a creation of human kind, our virtual reality is increasingly co-existing with our physical reality. If materiality has defined our psychological identities, how will a virtual reality, one void of physical things and space, begin to influence our notion of being? Following my interest in how art, craft, and design influence each other, I am becoming more and more interested in how our physical and virtual realities are also starting to influence one another.
I wonder, what type of psychological conditions have been established in our physical reality in order to conceive a virtual reality. Virtual reality is not limited in the same way our physical reality is. There is no gravity. Height, width, length - even the concept of time, has changed considerably. A reality has been created where the laws which govern our understanding of form and space are no longer conditional to understanding our relationship in an environment. By considering how the meaning of a physical object changes from form to concept, we may be able to have a fuller understanding of the virtual reality people are quickly accepting as evident. How we perceive an object as changed when its conditions or material make up also change, may be a starting point for rationalizing our notion of self within a virtual environment. This can be seen though an objects implied symbolism, its material manipulation, as well as changing its original intention.
Through an objects symbolism, meaning is derived when, as Mihay Csikszentmihaly, a psychologist, in his essay Design and Order in Everyday Life, “...it produces a sense of order in the mind.” Csikszentmihaly further explains that the objects we surround ourselves with are the concrete symbols that convey the messages of strong emotion between ones’ self and another. A possession passed down from generation to generation within a family is an example of an objects meaning as symbol of the original owner. In the past, the object was one of functionality, but now having survived life times, is embedded with the memories of it’s previous holders. The power of symbolism can also be used to establish a persons hierarchy amongst others.
An object which has been excessively elaborated on in design, also exchanges functionality for the power of symbolism. In this instance, the elaborative object is an example of how the original changes from something strictly physical to something conceptual. David Summers’ Real Spaces, gives us this example, “The king’s ceremonial sword in not the sharpest, but rather the most elaborate and therefore the most representational of power; the goal of its making is not efficiency relative to a function but efficacy in relation to a special, higher purpose.” Through decoration, the sword becomes the symbol of power, no longer a function of its form. An object still made from the same material and technique of it’s functional predecessor now holds meaning it previously did not. Through symbolism, an aspect of hierarchy as represented in the object, now sets an authoritative relationship between the user and the witness. Here we see that the symbolic object has relied on the intention of it’s functional predecessor, but is something new. Stripping away functionality and replacing it with elaborative elements, suggests that the holder of the symbolic object is also special. The holder, like the elaborative object, is intended for a higher purpose greater than the person who uses the standardized functional form. This approach to material as symbol, is similar to the understanding of our virtual reality. It was created with the material sensibilities of the functional physical world, but serves as it’s own entity; a symbol of our physical understanding. It was created from the developed notion of what Richard Sennett in The Craftsman, calls our material consciousness.
Sennett, a sociologist, explains that we have established our physical consciousness through the manipulation of material. Our intrigue with material happens when it is changed. Sennett states that this is done in three ways. When material goes through metamorphosis, when it is a recording of the maker’s presence, and when it becomes anthropomorphized. The craftsman utilizes all three of these methods of material consciousness when in the act of making but, for the purpose of this paper, I would like to focus on the former method of change. Metamorphosis, can be broken down into three separate categories of change. In this manner, material change can develop through type-form, meaning the thing can change within it’s own species. Mutation for instance, is an example of type-form metamorphosis. Joining a combination of two or more forms together and the concept of domain shift are also considered ways material changes through a metamorphic process. Domain shift, Sennett states, “...refers to how a tool initially used for one purpose can be applied to another task, or how the principle guiding one practice can be applied to quite another activity.” For example, the mortise-and-tenon joint in ship building derived from a seemingly different technique all together, that of the cloth join of warp and woof used in weaving. This is an example of a technical or skill based domain shift.
Shifting the domain of a principle beyond its original intention, can be seen in the creation of the virtual environment. The technical understanding of our material world, the principle of physics, shifted domains when we created the conceptualization of it, that which we call a virtual reality. Our previous knowledge of the physical helped us to formalize the idea of a virtual object or space. Even though neither object nor space exist in virtual reality, a vocabulary based in the previous principles of physics and material consciousness had to be utilized in order to create it. The physical world served as an educational matrix of which to conceptualize the virtual world off of. Due to which, we refer to the internet, the title we have come to know as our virtual reality, as a thing, even though it is not made of any material thing at all.
In another example of how a physical thing transfers from object meaning to conceptual meaning, Howard Risatti in A Theory of Craft, explains the difference between an objects function and its use. A utilitarian device has an intentionally designed purpose, it’s function, but anything with a certain amount of weight could also be a paper weight, it’s use. For instance, a teacup is crafted to hold a hot beverage, but a person could also use it to hold down loose papers. By doing so, we consider the object for the other qualities it possesses. As a hollow vessel, the teacup is one thing, as an object of mass, it is another. The notion of Marcel Duchamp’s readymade is similar to the differences between function and use. A coat rack screwed to a wall has the function of holding up articles of clothing. The same wooden plaque with hooks attached to it, when affixed to the floor, becomes a wonderfully inventive trip hazard, or in his case, art. The idea of the readymade was developed in the early twentieth century by Duchamp, and has had a profound impact on our perception of physical objects and their possibilities.
Considering the use of an object, beyond it’s intended function, has both helped and harmed our notion of what an object is. With imagination, an object can now be anything we want it to be. We are no longer constrained to identify it as one thing with only one function or purpose. Yet, by considering all the possibilities of that object, instead of utilizing it for it’s one designed purpose, that object loses it’s original value and meaning. We forget what it is and how it relates to us as makers and users. The utilitarian object now becomes merely another ambiguous thing. If we perceive physical reality in the same manner as we do a readymade object, for it’s use and not it’s made function, an alternant reality could be conceived from our understanding of it. That is to say, physical reality has been considered for it’s other possibilities- as a system or concept to base a virtual reality off of.
We have created a reality based on the immaterial values which have stemmed from our developed material consciousness. The values of information, communication, and entertainment, stem from the results of our physical interaction with material. Now separated from physical reality, these immaterial values are what define our notion of the virtual world. If a world can be defined not by objects and space, but by information, can the constructs which make up the Internet environment be considered as states of being? As solids, liquids and gases are states of physical being, will information, communication, and entertainment be virtual states of being? What impact do these states of being have on a persons psyche?
Through the examples of symbol, domain shift metamorphosis, and the readymade, the functional object has been accepted as conceptual object. If we associate what an object is with our notion of the physical world, it is easier to consider that it too, can be changed in meaning for the purpose of conceptualization. I propose that that is exactly what has happened less than twenty years ago with the public advent of the Internet. To fully understand the implications of this, and furthermore, if our physical reality has influenced the make up of our virtual one, then a perspective of the opposite can be theorized.
Stefano Marzano in The New Everyday - Views on Ambient Intelligence, shares a visual description of the new physical reality to come in the next ten years. Marzano states, “Ambient Intelligence can, to a degree, be thought of as an enabling and an extension of the Internet. This amorphous, networked technology is already breaking down the barriers of time and space.” He further describes a typical household now void of its black boxes; meaning our contemporary appliances like televisions and computers will soon be obsolete. Instead, our traditional, unintelligent objects will be infused with hidden technologies, thus rendering them “subjects, active and intelligent actors in our environment.” By eliminating more material objects from our physical existence, we will live with less obtrusive junk. Marzano suggests that by embedding technology into the objects we do need, such as chairs, tables, and beds, we still hold onto our cultural values of information, communication, and entertainment.
Content then becomes not specific to form, but to value. Meaning, If the physical reality of tomorrow is an extension of the formless content that makes up the Internet, then the objects of the future will possess a de-formed ambiguity. I propose then, that this will make some weird looking objects. Acknowledging the impact that the virtual world is having on our physical one, I am left to ponder why any further analysis between the distinctions of art, craft and design is relevant. By considering the broader perspective that all three disciplines of making are used to create physical objects, we will have a fuller understanding of the morphing realities of the physical and virtual.
Regardless of the psychological condition of which it was made, the object serves a physical function of defining space. This relationship is the applied experience of understanding the function of physicality. A condition which I believe is slowly slipping from our consciousness due in part by living within two different sensibilities of reality at the same time. By creating a space defined by objects which serve all the functions of art, craft, and design, beyond a physically standardized manner, a new meaning is given to it. Kurt Schitters’ Merzbau installations are examples of how the unlimited sensibilities of the virtual could be made material. Brian O’Doherty states in Inside the White Cube the Ideology of the Gallery Space, that the Merzbau is a combination of design, sculpture, and architecture; nullifying the forms individually, in order to create one symbolic meaning and experience through form and space.
The original Merzbau of the early 1920‘s and 30‘s, was before it’s time. Taking time into consideration, the reconstruction of the Merzbau today could simulate what is psychologically necessary for understanding a virtual environment. As the original installation is made up of discarded construction refuse, materials that were repurposed for the use of their unique shape, not for their structural function, the Merzbau now becomes symbolic in meaning through it’s ambiguous reformalization of material. Like the virtual world, we relate to the Merzbau because it is familiar in some manner, but is not easily quantifiable. It is a hybrid space defined by quasi-recognizable objects and conditions. To reconstruct the Merzbau today would be to produce a sense of order in ones mind of what the virtual world is. It would create an understanding that it is a symbol of what we hold as our deepest possession. Our understanding of place in the physical world.
I wonder, what type of psychological conditions have been established in our physical reality in order to conceive a virtual reality. Virtual reality is not limited in the same way our physical reality is. There is no gravity. Height, width, length - even the concept of time, has changed considerably. A reality has been created where the laws which govern our understanding of form and space are no longer conditional to understanding our relationship in an environment. By considering how the meaning of a physical object changes from form to concept, we may be able to have a fuller understanding of the virtual reality people are quickly accepting as evident. How we perceive an object as changed when its conditions or material make up also change, may be a starting point for rationalizing our notion of self within a virtual environment. This can be seen though an objects implied symbolism, its material manipulation, as well as changing its original intention.
Through an objects symbolism, meaning is derived when, as Mihay Csikszentmihaly, a psychologist, in his essay Design and Order in Everyday Life, “...it produces a sense of order in the mind.” Csikszentmihaly further explains that the objects we surround ourselves with are the concrete symbols that convey the messages of strong emotion between ones’ self and another. A possession passed down from generation to generation within a family is an example of an objects meaning as symbol of the original owner. In the past, the object was one of functionality, but now having survived life times, is embedded with the memories of it’s previous holders. The power of symbolism can also be used to establish a persons hierarchy amongst others.
An object which has been excessively elaborated on in design, also exchanges functionality for the power of symbolism. In this instance, the elaborative object is an example of how the original changes from something strictly physical to something conceptual. David Summers’ Real Spaces, gives us this example, “The king’s ceremonial sword in not the sharpest, but rather the most elaborate and therefore the most representational of power; the goal of its making is not efficiency relative to a function but efficacy in relation to a special, higher purpose.” Through decoration, the sword becomes the symbol of power, no longer a function of its form. An object still made from the same material and technique of it’s functional predecessor now holds meaning it previously did not. Through symbolism, an aspect of hierarchy as represented in the object, now sets an authoritative relationship between the user and the witness. Here we see that the symbolic object has relied on the intention of it’s functional predecessor, but is something new. Stripping away functionality and replacing it with elaborative elements, suggests that the holder of the symbolic object is also special. The holder, like the elaborative object, is intended for a higher purpose greater than the person who uses the standardized functional form. This approach to material as symbol, is similar to the understanding of our virtual reality. It was created with the material sensibilities of the functional physical world, but serves as it’s own entity; a symbol of our physical understanding. It was created from the developed notion of what Richard Sennett in The Craftsman, calls our material consciousness.
Sennett, a sociologist, explains that we have established our physical consciousness through the manipulation of material. Our intrigue with material happens when it is changed. Sennett states that this is done in three ways. When material goes through metamorphosis, when it is a recording of the maker’s presence, and when it becomes anthropomorphized. The craftsman utilizes all three of these methods of material consciousness when in the act of making but, for the purpose of this paper, I would like to focus on the former method of change. Metamorphosis, can be broken down into three separate categories of change. In this manner, material change can develop through type-form, meaning the thing can change within it’s own species. Mutation for instance, is an example of type-form metamorphosis. Joining a combination of two or more forms together and the concept of domain shift are also considered ways material changes through a metamorphic process. Domain shift, Sennett states, “...refers to how a tool initially used for one purpose can be applied to another task, or how the principle guiding one practice can be applied to quite another activity.” For example, the mortise-and-tenon joint in ship building derived from a seemingly different technique all together, that of the cloth join of warp and woof used in weaving. This is an example of a technical or skill based domain shift.
Shifting the domain of a principle beyond its original intention, can be seen in the creation of the virtual environment. The technical understanding of our material world, the principle of physics, shifted domains when we created the conceptualization of it, that which we call a virtual reality. Our previous knowledge of the physical helped us to formalize the idea of a virtual object or space. Even though neither object nor space exist in virtual reality, a vocabulary based in the previous principles of physics and material consciousness had to be utilized in order to create it. The physical world served as an educational matrix of which to conceptualize the virtual world off of. Due to which, we refer to the internet, the title we have come to know as our virtual reality, as a thing, even though it is not made of any material thing at all.
In another example of how a physical thing transfers from object meaning to conceptual meaning, Howard Risatti in A Theory of Craft, explains the difference between an objects function and its use. A utilitarian device has an intentionally designed purpose, it’s function, but anything with a certain amount of weight could also be a paper weight, it’s use. For instance, a teacup is crafted to hold a hot beverage, but a person could also use it to hold down loose papers. By doing so, we consider the object for the other qualities it possesses. As a hollow vessel, the teacup is one thing, as an object of mass, it is another. The notion of Marcel Duchamp’s readymade is similar to the differences between function and use. A coat rack screwed to a wall has the function of holding up articles of clothing. The same wooden plaque with hooks attached to it, when affixed to the floor, becomes a wonderfully inventive trip hazard, or in his case, art. The idea of the readymade was developed in the early twentieth century by Duchamp, and has had a profound impact on our perception of physical objects and their possibilities.
Considering the use of an object, beyond it’s intended function, has both helped and harmed our notion of what an object is. With imagination, an object can now be anything we want it to be. We are no longer constrained to identify it as one thing with only one function or purpose. Yet, by considering all the possibilities of that object, instead of utilizing it for it’s one designed purpose, that object loses it’s original value and meaning. We forget what it is and how it relates to us as makers and users. The utilitarian object now becomes merely another ambiguous thing. If we perceive physical reality in the same manner as we do a readymade object, for it’s use and not it’s made function, an alternant reality could be conceived from our understanding of it. That is to say, physical reality has been considered for it’s other possibilities- as a system or concept to base a virtual reality off of.
We have created a reality based on the immaterial values which have stemmed from our developed material consciousness. The values of information, communication, and entertainment, stem from the results of our physical interaction with material. Now separated from physical reality, these immaterial values are what define our notion of the virtual world. If a world can be defined not by objects and space, but by information, can the constructs which make up the Internet environment be considered as states of being? As solids, liquids and gases are states of physical being, will information, communication, and entertainment be virtual states of being? What impact do these states of being have on a persons psyche?
Through the examples of symbol, domain shift metamorphosis, and the readymade, the functional object has been accepted as conceptual object. If we associate what an object is with our notion of the physical world, it is easier to consider that it too, can be changed in meaning for the purpose of conceptualization. I propose that that is exactly what has happened less than twenty years ago with the public advent of the Internet. To fully understand the implications of this, and furthermore, if our physical reality has influenced the make up of our virtual one, then a perspective of the opposite can be theorized.
Stefano Marzano in The New Everyday - Views on Ambient Intelligence, shares a visual description of the new physical reality to come in the next ten years. Marzano states, “Ambient Intelligence can, to a degree, be thought of as an enabling and an extension of the Internet. This amorphous, networked technology is already breaking down the barriers of time and space.” He further describes a typical household now void of its black boxes; meaning our contemporary appliances like televisions and computers will soon be obsolete. Instead, our traditional, unintelligent objects will be infused with hidden technologies, thus rendering them “subjects, active and intelligent actors in our environment.” By eliminating more material objects from our physical existence, we will live with less obtrusive junk. Marzano suggests that by embedding technology into the objects we do need, such as chairs, tables, and beds, we still hold onto our cultural values of information, communication, and entertainment.
Content then becomes not specific to form, but to value. Meaning, If the physical reality of tomorrow is an extension of the formless content that makes up the Internet, then the objects of the future will possess a de-formed ambiguity. I propose then, that this will make some weird looking objects. Acknowledging the impact that the virtual world is having on our physical one, I am left to ponder why any further analysis between the distinctions of art, craft and design is relevant. By considering the broader perspective that all three disciplines of making are used to create physical objects, we will have a fuller understanding of the morphing realities of the physical and virtual.
Regardless of the psychological condition of which it was made, the object serves a physical function of defining space. This relationship is the applied experience of understanding the function of physicality. A condition which I believe is slowly slipping from our consciousness due in part by living within two different sensibilities of reality at the same time. By creating a space defined by objects which serve all the functions of art, craft, and design, beyond a physically standardized manner, a new meaning is given to it. Kurt Schitters’ Merzbau installations are examples of how the unlimited sensibilities of the virtual could be made material. Brian O’Doherty states in Inside the White Cube the Ideology of the Gallery Space, that the Merzbau is a combination of design, sculpture, and architecture; nullifying the forms individually, in order to create one symbolic meaning and experience through form and space.
The original Merzbau of the early 1920‘s and 30‘s, was before it’s time. Taking time into consideration, the reconstruction of the Merzbau today could simulate what is psychologically necessary for understanding a virtual environment. As the original installation is made up of discarded construction refuse, materials that were repurposed for the use of their unique shape, not for their structural function, the Merzbau now becomes symbolic in meaning through it’s ambiguous reformalization of material. Like the virtual world, we relate to the Merzbau because it is familiar in some manner, but is not easily quantifiable. It is a hybrid space defined by quasi-recognizable objects and conditions. To reconstruct the Merzbau today would be to produce a sense of order in ones mind of what the virtual world is. It would create an understanding that it is a symbol of what we hold as our deepest possession. Our understanding of place in the physical world.
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