Fossils of a Dream

Fossils Of A Dream

Gerrit Rietveld Academie Jewellery Department Het Sieraad Thesis Advisor: Alena Alexandrova

Zindzi Wijminga ‘Fossils of a Dream’ Bachelor Thesis

2 Table of Contents

Introduction p. 5

Part One The Living Object p. 7 1. Imagination p. 7 'Seeing the World in a Grain of Sand' Suspension of Disbelief Making Things Come Alive Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable

2. The Hybrid p. 13 Animation as a Hybrid of Life and Death Cabinet of Knowledge The Living Object Fossils of a Dream

Part Two Human Relationship with the Living Object p. 23 1. Animism p. 23 Transitional Object Transitional Object in Macro Perspective

2. The Human Being as a Living Object p. 27 To Create or to be Created? Invisible things

3. The Human Being as a Hybrid p. 31 Evolution of things Equilibrium

Conclusion p. 33

Bibliography p. 35

4 Introduction

I have always been interested in the human ability to get emotionally attached to objects. In the search for why I make jewellery I realized I have a predilection for things, especially three-dimensional objects. When I came across the term ‘The Living Object’ I realised that all the concepts and questions I have around my own practice could come together in this idea. In my latest project I am working with plastic cutlery. I consider plastic as the ultimate fictitious matter typical of our time. I see plastic, pressed into a cutlery mould in the factory, as a corset the thing is forced into. By melting them I allow the object to move again, to reorganize their molecular structure in the way they would prefer to. This way I treat the object as a creature and listen to the voice of its substance. This creates an interesting play in the search for balance between leading and being led by material. The following questions arise from this exploration: are we leading or being led in innovative/making processes? do we create or are we created? to what extent is the possibility to restrain matter a human illusion?

This balance play between me and the material made me interested in contrasts and how they are paradoxically existing within one object. I got interested in the tensions between: sustainable and innovative, conservative and progressive, mass and individuals or uniqueness, rationality and imagination, known and unknown, left and right hemisphere of the brain. I came across a lecture from Iain McGilchrist on his book ‘The Master and His Emissary’ about why our brain is divided. The left and right hemisphere do not have completely different brain functions and tasks, as scientist used to think that rational thinking is associated with the left part and imagination with the right part. But McGilchrist states that the brain is divided because its specific way of perceiving the world differs from left and right and so they are both needed to function and to do tasks like imagining. After watching this lecture animated by RSA1 the following question arose: how are two contrary elements able to be embodied within one object?

In the first chapter of this thesis I will explore different aspects of the living object and its hybridity to discuss our relationship with this object. In the second part of the thesis I will go deeper into the subject of the human relation with objects, how this came to exist and what this means for humanity.

1. http://www.thersa.org/

Photographer: Gary Greenberg, from noon clockwise: a pink shell fragment, a foram, a microscopic shell, a volcanic melt, a bit of coral and a seashell in the middle. (magnification 200X)

6 Part One The Living Object

During the Rietveld Uncut project 2012 in the Flemish Cultural Centre ‘de Brakke Grond’ in Amsterdam Kris Verdonck introduced the term ‘living object’. This project started off with reading Von Kleist’s essay ‘On the marionette theatre’. It made me realize that all the concepts and questions I had around my own practice came together within the idea of ‘The Living Object’. In this chapter I will explore the animate qualities of an object.

1. Imagination

Seeing the World in a Grain of Sand The phrase ‘Seeing the world in a grain of sand’2 can be seen as a metaphor of how structures in the micro cosmos are repeated in the macro cosmos. The thought of a grain of sand will differ from person to person. Did you grow up at the seaside or did you only see sand in a sandbox? If we collect sand and take it with us, it makes us see it as a possession and we consider it as something we will use, perhaps functional or for decoration. If you see a lot of sand together one little grain of sand might not seem to mean anything, to have no value, but if you come closer and you will look at each grain separately you can see that they differ from one another. Differences in shape, form, material they are made of and origin. If you look even closer you might see a feature that can tell you where it came from. Maybe it is a minuscule little piece of shell. Something that at the first sight seemed to be lifeless or dead appears to be coming from an organism. There has been a great history on how it came to be, from growing into a mature sea snail, then maybe the shell even became the house of a hermit crab for a while, to breaking down by the waves of the sea that polished it all the way down to the size of this little grain of sand. What we recognize in the appearance of the grain can also make our fantasy run wild. The shape can remind us of something else, something completely different that looks alike. So the meaning of a grain of sand depends on what happens in our minds. How do we interpret what we see? And is that based on fact or perception?

Suspension of Disbelief Imagination is an interesting capacity of the human brain. It makes humans able to create a fictional world around and beyond what exists in their real environment. There is a thin line between imagination as a conscious choice and the deceiving character of our subjective perception. The performance installation ‘Inner Beauty’ from the French artist Frédéric Braham is playing with this thin line. It is based on the healing effect of minerals that are dissolved in water, in a similar way as homeopathy. In his performance he gives the audience a little spoon with a drip of the liquid that contains either diamond, ruby, sapphire, emerald, pearl, gold, meteorite or Yves Klein blue. He claims that if you swallow the substance it will find its way in the body to have a healing effect. It deals with the phenomenon of the placebo, where it is most important to believe in the effect of the substance. Only if we believe in it, will it have the effect we want it to have. Our imagination is then so strong that it can fool us and we consider the effect as being true. We secretly want these things to be true and really want to believe in it. I find it fascinating that this only exists in our mind. This raises a lot of questions: Is it not always necessary to be aware of things being fictitious? Do we doubt wether something is true too seldom or too often? Can we switch between different realities? Is it limiting to be too aware of our subjective perception? Can we still be deceived by our own imagination? Are we aware of this and able to control it, or does it happen automatically as a result of what we sense? Do we fool ourselves, or do we get fooled by ourselves when looking at the world?

2. The first line of the poem ‘Auguries of innocence’ from William Blake (1757-1827)

7 Applied Fiction, ‘Pygmies’, 360 x 500 x 435 cm, Aparna Rao and Søren Pors, 2006-09

8 What is the importance of knowing, judging, defining, categorizing? How big can the open space between objective observing of what we sense and the subjective recognizing and categorization become? For this thesis I chose to focus on the questions I feel are most important.

As we saw in the grain of sand it is the imagination that plays an important role in making this object come alive. In the following art piece our imagination is triggered by the imitation of human behaviour. The interaction-designers duo Aparna Rao and Søren Pors have created high- tech art installations under the name ‘Applied Fiction’. In the piece called ‘The Pygmies’ they have installed different sized panels on three walls of a room, behind them hide little creatures. When it is quiet in the room they creep out, and after a longer quiet period even stretch their necks out. But at the slightest sound they hide again. After a while they get familiar with sounds they hear more often, so they get less ‘scared’ of the sounds they recognize. Rao and Pors have tried to make them as lifelike as possible by providing each creature with its own individual character. And because they installed each single pygmy different, they all have their own way of reacting on sounds. This makes it even more feel like we are looking at a tribe, because they act like a group.

Because the pygmies imitate humans we recognize their behaviour and start to see them as living creatures. As Aparna Rao describes in her TED-talk3, she found that people were quite playful and childlike with the pygmies. I find it interesting that people are still aware that the pygmies are not ‘real’ but because there is an interaction going on it becomes very easy to pretend that they are real creatures. With this pretending are we then able to enjoy the childlike experience more by ignoring our awareness of it being fake?

I see a similar thing happening when my cat finds an object to play with. He is throwing it around the room and then immediately follows it to catch it again. First the cat makes the object imitate the behaviour of a mouse in order to go back in its own role of a cat to hunt it. I find it fascinating to observe how the cat can impose an identity on an object.

Would there be a similar thing going on in the cats brain as there is when the people watch the pygmies? Or is it my projection on what a cat is aware of or not? And is this behaviour only a matter of instinct of practicing catching techniques in order to improve the cats hunting skills? In this case I have the choice of how I want to perceive this situation and I am able to choose for the one that is more enjoyable; to pretend the cat has an imagination. Even if scientist would prove that projection is more likely to be true, I am still able to ignore this knowledge and awareness and make myself believe in my own imaginary world again. Just like children try really hard to continue believing in Santa Claus and fairy tales.

3. TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading"

Bruggen Borneo/Sporenburg, West 8. Adriaan Geuze, Oosterlijke Haven Eilanden/Eastern Harbour District, Amsterdam, 2001, ‘De Python Brug’

10 Making Things Come Alive Another way of making things 'come alive' is when we recognize certain forms and shapes from nature. We can associate organic shapes with patterns of how plants grow, or animal-like bone- structures. Designers often base their design on constructions they see in nature. Evolution made these constructions come to shape and they have functioned so well by evolving over millions of years that we can learn a lot from these ‘smart’ solutions.

For example I see this in one of the twin bridges of project ‘Bruggen Borneo/Sporenburg’ designed by the architectural firm West 8 (Adriaan Geuze) at the Eastern Harbour District in Amsterdam. This is the tallest of the two and has a spectacular contour that reminds me of an Apatosaurus. I find it interesting that the neighborhood gave this bridge the nickname ‘The Python Bridge’. It obviously had no other title than the project name when it was build in 2001 and so it got named after the associations of the people that use it and live around it.

Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable The next aspect I want to discuss is the important factor of the recognisability of an object. We copy nature, not only for function, but also for aesthetics as we often consider nature to be beautiful. I think this has to do with our instinct, that we get more attracted to a certain kind of shape, because it reminds us of food, for instance, or we get a repulsive feeling when a shape reminds us of danger. According to an article on brain activities in relation to design and commodity objects we seem to prefer round objects when we want to feel safe. Sharp edges and pointy corners alarm the amygdala (a part in the brain that mainly functions for emotions, especially anxiety) because in nature they usually indicate danger.4 So to appreciate these forms we need to have a certain level of security. It also showed, that when people feel safe they have a tendency to get bored more easily and they are more open to unconventional designs.

Familiarity is an important factor for if we can appreciate the new form. We have to get used to a new form. For innovative designs the following counts: the more we see them, the more we start to like them. We have a preference for prototypes, but also a desire for variation. These two contrary principles should be combined in new design. The American designer Raymond Loewy called this the ‘maya’-principle, ‘most advanced, yet acceptable’.5 In an object we need to partly recognize something to refer to, and partly get surprised by new innovative appearances. Therefore we see a hybridity of conservative and progressive needs of human beings. The balance between these two human characteristics depends on our mood. The fact is that they both need to be embodied within one object in order to be appreciated, which is clear from these scientific studies. In the next chapter I will explain more about this hybrid mixture in an object.

4. M. Bar and M. Neta, ‘Visual Elements of Subjective Preference Modulate Amygdala Activation’ From Neuropsychologia 45, 2007; pp. 2191-2200. Found in ‘Psyche&Brein’ nr.4 2011, pp. 12-17 5. P.M.M. Hekkert “Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable: Typicality and Novelty as Joint Predictors of Aesthetic Preference in Industrial Design.“ From British Journal of Psychology94, 2003; pp. 111-124. Found in ‘Psyche&Brein’ nr.4 2011, pp. 12-17

12 2. The Hybrid

In this chapter I will discuss the concept of hybridity in an object. A Hybrid is a result of two elements combined to form something new. But for my subject it is most often about two contrary elements that do not seem to fit, but are somehow caught within one object. It is the ambiguity that sometimes causes confusion and makes it difficult to grasp, but is for that reason very interesting. They seem to conflict, but could also live together in harmony and enhance the thing as a whole. It is for this reason that it is perceived as quality in most pieces. It is captured in an object that makes us as a viewer become aware of the two possible ways to perceive. Because it contains two opposite facts or characteristics it could function as a paradox.

Animation as a Hybrid of Life and Death The suspension of disbelief plays an important role in object theatre and animation movies. Because it deals with lifeless material that suggests life, it is obvious that we are dealing with fiction. As Hanny Alkema says: "Theatre and film often communicate through language, or if language is not used it still communicates with the intellect, and only through rationalization does it reach our emotions. But when objects are used to suggest life it will make our imagination start running and this connects directly with our emotions. If the fictitiousness is obvious we can ignore the awareness of it being not real, and so our rational is ignored with it. It gives us the chance to understand on a more intuitive level. Our imagination takes over and we perceive what we see with our subconscious mind."6

This even goes further in stop-motion animation. On the one hand it has recognizable lifeless objects as we know them from our reality, but on the other hand a new reality is created in which other rules count, here the objects have a life of their own in which anything seems possible. The fact that it deals with real objects gives it actually much more limits than for instance computer animations. In computer animations it is possible to polish the work endlessly because it is totally boundless. The rough edges of stop motion animation are a result of the limits of its medium, which is exactly what makes it so interesting. The Brothers Quay work with this in their animation movies in a very interesting way. It is clear from the start that we are dealing with an imaginary world. To a certain extent we can refer to this world, but on the other hand, because it all happens in an imaginary world, it has its own logic so it is not bound to the possibilities of reality. It is in fact a hybrid of life and death. The Brothers Quay made ‘Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer’7, homage to the Czech animator, who has been a great inspiration for them. In this film we see the puppet Švankmajer, with an encyclopaedia as a head, teaching the child (a porcelain doll which obviously symbolizes the brothers Quay) several lessons on how to perceive the objects from his cabinet of knowledge. He empties ‘rubbish’ from the head of the child to replace it for a book and an eye.

In Heinrich von Kleist’s essay 'On The Marionette Theatre'8 the narrator and a dancer have a dialogue on the hypothesis that marionettes dance with more grace than human dancers. The human dancer will always be conscious of his own movement to some extent, whereas the object does not have this self-awareness and therefore will not be inhibited in its gracefulness. Its movements will always be pure and spontaneous. As Bianca Theisen puts it: “In a dance with words, as it were, Kleist displaces the option of an external cause of movement or an immovable mover onto the paradox of a self-implication of the operator in his operation... With this paradoxical coincidence between God and marionette [unconsciousness and consciousness], the dancer displaces nothing less than the distinction between mind and matter. In fact, he continues, it’s ever since man ate from the tree of knowledge, and thus ever since he learned to

6. Translation mine from Hanny Alkema, ‘Een pop is geen pop is een’ Theater Instituut Nederland, PS ITEMS, 2005, pp. 87 7. The Brothers Quay, ‘The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer’, 1984, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDbPjwxyYGU 8. Heinrich von Kleist, ‘Über das Marionettentheater‘ (Berliner Abendblätter, 1810)

‘The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer’, Film-stills, The Brothers Quay, 1984, Above: The Cabinet of Knowledge, Below: The child receives a book and an eye

14 draw such distinctions, that he lost his grace.”9 I recognize this in my own practice. When making a ring I need a certain amount of spontaneity when I react on the melting process of the plastic. The movement to make the ring doesn’t come out with grace if I am too self-aware, or trying to reproduce a certain shape. I can only attempt to reach the same shape by letting go of awareness so as not to force the movement. I try to identify with the plastic, and ‘become’ the object, in order to abrogate the distinction of mind and matter.

Through the confrontation with objects one knows what he is capable of and what not. This has the same effect as the youth in Kleist’s essay, who is trying to observe what he sees through the eyes of another; an example of “losing grace”. Or to put it in a larger perspective; mankind gets to know more of what it knows and especially what it does not know, that which still has to be invented, by confronting the things that surround it, the things it creates. I see a similarity in the development of a child’s relation to objects. From the moment he becomes aware of himself not being one with the rest, there will be a distinction of mind and matter and it will make the division between himself as a ‘me’ and everything else.

Here we see the hybridity of an object appear. On the one hand we can see the object as something that reminds us of what we are not, and perceive it as a distinction between mind and matter. But on the other hand one can also see the object as part of the identity of a person. When one recognizes oneself in a thing, one starts to identify with the object and wants to possess it, to feel more oneself. Objects that appeal to us are a reflection of our personality. Our possessions could be considered as an extension of our personality or a confirmation of our identity. These two possible ways to perceive an object will come back in the second part of this thesis.

The Cabinet of Knowledge I find the image of a cabinet as the Brothers Quay used in ‘Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer’ a very good metaphor for the brain function of information processing. In this paragraph I will use this metaphor to discuss associations and how they influence perception. The ever-subjective way we perceive an object is a blind spot. By judging, we label the object and therefore experience it as something else; something other than what it is objectively. When we look at something, see or sense something we automatically try to categorize it, pin it down, in order to understand it. During our development from child to adult it becomes a habit to identify or name new things we see immediately. We compare it with things we’ve experienced earlier in our lives and the conclusions we made about that particular situation. Our associations are in fact a representation of reality. These construct our frame of reference from which we will be able to conceive the things we experience. While experiencing our surroundings we go through the following sequence: sense, associate, judge, categorize, storing it as a memory. How we judge and store the information in our own ‘cabinet of knowledge’ depends on how we perceive it, within the context of our own reality, based on what is in fact already stored in the drawers. Often we don’t even realise that we judge something because of the associations we have with the object or the situation. Like with driving a car we have forgotten about the actual movements of our body that are needed to control driving it. We are not aware of the detailed-little- segmented-in-between steps of this cognitive sequence of information processing. This way we create our own beliefs, our own subjective reality. When we trust our beliefs too much, without checking reality, we live in fact in our own illusion. We will always be deceived by our perception because we are not able to see our blind spot. Although Jan Švankmajer gave the child an eye to have a more critical view on the world, the eye is still not able to see itself.

9. Bianca Theisen, Dancing With Words. Kleist’s ‘Marionette Theatre’ (The John Hopkins University Press, 2006) MLN 121 pp. 522-529

Afdaling in het ongewisse/Descent into Limbo, fiberglass, acrylic medium en pigment, several dimensions, Anish Kapoor,1992

1998.AK.06

Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus holds an interesting phrase: “Illusion and play -these essentials of art- have art’s own conscience against them today. Art tends to stop being illusion and play- and thus stop being itself. It would like to become the consciousness of knowing: knowledge.”10 Precisely not being able to place something in a context is the quality of art. It triggers the imagination and gives us the possibility to make different connections in the brain. Imagination that comes while we look at art mixes up the ‘drawers of the cabinet of knowledge’ because fiction has its own logic. Do we form different utopian ‘realities’ this way?

Johan Breackman and Maarten Boudry studied our ability to make connections between things that have nothing to do with each other. Our brain can easily bring things that come from different context together, and will try to make connections in attempt to find an understanding. This is especially something the surrealists used in their art. Dreams and intuitive feelings were more important for them than rationality. By posing different contrary or seemingly random recognizable elements combined into one composition they play with the mixing up of different associations. The new connections that will be made in the mind of the spectator evoke questions about our beliefs. De Pont in Tilburg presents the Anish Kapoor ‘Descent into Limbo’, which deals with the experience of having no clear idea of what we are seeing. It is actually a black hole in a white surface, but because it is totally black it is at first sight difficult to judge what you are looking at. It could for instance also be a flat surface made out of soft fabric. Sometimes there is no tangible image or representation of something and because we do not know how to place it, we experience a very strong physical feeling.

10. Thomas Mann “Doctor Faustus” quoted by E. Heller in 'In The Age of Prose' (Cambridge University Press, 1984) ''The Dismantling of a Marionette Theatre; or, Psychology and the Misinterpretation of Literature'' pp. 426

Voor boer en tuinder, Tomato, silver rings, Hilde de Dekker, 1999-2004

The Living Object The ‘Living object’ is an object that consists of two parts that tell a paradoxical story about us in our imagination. This story could be about ourselves as if looking in a mirror to reflect. But it could also just be about our memories that were stored, in our frame of reference or as I would like to call it: our cabinet of knowledge. It tells us a part of a story we can grasp and understand and relate to. This is the familiar and secure part of the story, it is all the things we have seen in our life and the ways in which we are used to looking at or handling them. The way we are conditioned adds up to how we experience and judge this story. But the other part is how the object tells a story we have never heard before. We don’t know it; it is completely new for us. It is inaccessible knowledge, because it comes from another reality, a fictional world. In attempt to get an idea of what this information could be, we compare it with our associations. This makes a film of images that start running in our mind, which is different for everyone. We have no control over this dream and it has no logic. This is the moment the object takes control. This part also emerges during the process of creating. The maker has no influence over this; he can only react to it. The resistance of matter shows its own behaviour and tells its own story.

To explore our relationship with the resistance of matter I would like to have a closer look at fruits and vegetables. Most fruit and vegetables evolved as strategies from nature to spread the seeds of the plant by animals that use them for food. Through evolution a strong connection, between the visual outcome of the fruit and the way animals were attracted to them, was made. The colours and shapes where important for the animals to come closer and only when close enough, would they be able to judge whether the fruit was ripe enough or perhaps even poisonous. It was not much different, for us humans, when we were still living in caves. Even today, we still tend to judge fruit by the way it looks. Even though the taste could differ, supermarkets select their fruits and vegetables on their visual appearance. Even here there is a stereotypical image of what a certain fruit should look like. With genetic modification we change the outcome to the extreme ideal. Size and shape, colour, shine, it is possible to find the code behind each feature. We treat this living organism as a dead thing instead of making a lifeless object come alive. We do not see the fruit as part of a growing process from nature anymore, we start seeing nature as a food producing system, over which we have complete control of its ‘settings’. Because we are used to completely modify our artificial surroundings, we automatically wish to manipulate and change nature as well. But we did not make nature, it is already there and we can only respond to it and bend the outcome. Nature seems only to be welcome, when it is functional, when it behaves in ways we want to use it.

Hilde de Decker made ‘For the Farmer and Market Gardener’11 between 1999-2004 and it is in these works that I see a nice interplay between nature and culture. The idea of the fruit growing through the ring creates the image of free will in the plant. It is as if the plant had decided how it would shape his fruit into the ring, all by itself. At first sight I thought the ring was pierced into the fruit, but then I realize the relationship between ring and fruit is more harmonious. I perceive this as Hilde de Decker held the ring in front of the plant as if to offer it a change, to create its own interplay. Looking at a fruit that grows into the position where a gemstone was traditionally placed, made me become more aware of the growing process of gemstones. The fruit becomes a symbol of natural growth, much faster in this case, whereas the emergence of gemstones takes millions of years by the process of crystallization.

11. Hilde de Dekker, ‘Voor boer en tuinder’, 1999-2004

Fossils of a Dream Human beings are the first and only species that added an artificial element to the sedimentary layers of the earth. As humans started to create symbols and a language of symbolism, which ended up in these layers, archaeologists were able to study our history. The manmade things are a crystallized moment in time. They become the fossils of imagination from that specific person, that lived at that specific moment, on that specific place on earth. The great amounts of manmade things we’ve created on this planet today have also created a lot of waste as a result. Each time we wash synthetic clothes it leaves behind microscopic synthetic fibres that end up in the ocean. Like cliffs are actually big piles of deposits of calcium/lime residue from small organism that lived millions of years ago, this great amount of micro plastic fibres will interfere with nature and eventually become part of the sedimentary layer of today.12 Will this result in a hybrid of natural growth and artificiality, from which new chemical connections could arise?

Plastic is the ultimate manmade and artificial matter. It can take any shape and therefore it is the prominent material to put our fictional world into reality. Plastic is us, and we are plastic. As Roland Barthes says: “The hierarchy of substances is abolished: a single one replaces them all: the whole world can be plasticized, and even life itself since, we are told, they are beginning to make plastic aortas... Plastic is the very idea of its infinite transformation; as its everyday name indicates” At first sight plastic seems totally flexible and its feature as metamorphoses could indicate infinite plasticity but even plastic is predetermined. The visual appearance of plastic cutlery seems the same for every piece, because of the mould into which it was first pressed, but every single piece actually has its own specific unique molecular structure code like every human being has its own DNA composition. As a maker I find this a very interesting aspect of plastic. By melting them out of their cutlery position, I give the spoon its voice back. I allow it to tell its individual story. Depending on its molecular composition it can move in the way it wants to. As I respond to this movement it creates an improvisational piece, which has a harmonious balance of me, as the maker, both manipulating the object as allowing myself to be led by the objects matter.

12. Bas Haring, ‘Het Aquarium van Walter Huijsmans of waarom zouden we ons zorgen maken over de toekomst van de aarde?’ (Lemniscaat, 2009)

22 Part Two Human Relationship with The Living Object

1. Animism

In an interview with the Belgian philosophers Johan Braeckman and Maarten Boudry on their book “The Incredulous Thomas Has a Point, a Compendium for Critical Thinking”13 they discuss several interesting reasons for our brain to be confused by our perception. And they argue that the more we are aware of the great pitfalls that lie in our perception and memory, the more balanced our critical thinking can be. Our brains are set to detect evolutionarily important patterns. Our ability to make causal relationships for instance, was essential to survive in ancestral times, just as facial recognition is very important to us, as a social species. But if this pattern recognition is adjusted too sharply it can lead to illusions, patterns that are not there. We tend to project our thoughts and desires onto others. This makes us also able to ascribe intentions to lifeless entities. This phenomenon is related to Animism.

The Transitional Object The term Animism is used in anthropology to indicate the belief that everything, whether animate or inanimate, possesses a soul or spirit. All infants, until a certain age, have the tendency to think everything around them has intentions. Which makes sense if we look at the development of a child, as explained by D.W. Winnicott.14 In the first period of the life of a baby the mother does everything for her child to take care of it. She thinks for it and gives it everything it wants. Because of this symbiosis the infant lives in the illusion that everything he wishes will be fulfilled. The infant doesn’t see a difference between himself, the mother or his surroundings; he perceives everything as being one.

Later the mother stops fulfilling all the child’s wishes, to make him more independent. This makes the child start to become self-aware. Winnicott has called this new way of perceiving in the transitional phenomenon, the intermediate area between the subjective and that what is objectively perceived. This is a reality experienced through objects, ‘the first not-me possessions’ in the life of the child. Often the infant will find one object that gets a very important role, because it will represent his mother. Winnicott calls this the transitional object. Now the infant realizes that the symbiosis with the mother has been an illusion, the transitional object takes over her role and functions as a symbol for what she used to give him. It is an extension of the mother, so it makes him feel safe and not lonely in new situations.

It is exactly the stains and the repairing of the teddy which make it irreplaceable, because this stands for the memories and experiences that they shared. Or as kids would experience it ‘the adventures they had together’. The mother allows it to become dirty and smelly, because she knows if she would wash it, the meaning and value of the object may be destroyed. Infants experience the reality through this object. It functions as a model to represent a situation. In this ‘In-between-reality’ it plays with the objects in his surrounding and uses his imagination to create what he wants, to fulfill his desires. By controlling objects, it is more able to control the situation. In this stage the child starts to see himself as distinct from his surroundings.

13. Johan Braeckman and Maarten Boudry title translation mine from “De Ongelovige Thomas Heeft een Punt, een Handleiding voor Kritisch Denken” (Houtekiet, 2011) 14. D. W. Winnicott, ‘The Transitional Object and Transitional Phenomena’ In: ‘The Object Reader’, Ed. by Fiona Candlin and Raiford Guins, (Routledge, 2009) pp. 64-79

‘Teddy Universe’, Faux Fur, Fiber Optics, Metal, Plastic, Electro-mechanical Components, 87 x 132 x 155 cm, Aparna Rao and Søren Pors, 2009-11

24 Object handling becomes the child’s way to test and understand reality, to explore how the world 'works'. During playing he will discover what is possible and what is not and how people around him use objects. Parents offer their children specific objects to play with. Whereas the transitional object has been the initiative of the child to substitute the mother, the parents choose the other toys. Roland Barthes wrote about our tendency to give children toys that teach them how to behave, to prepare them for society, based on imitation of ‘modern adult-life’. As Barthes says: “French toys always mean something, and this something is always entirely socialized, constituted by the myths or techniques of modern adult life”15 In this way we train them to become users and owners rather than creators. The ideas that they are able to manipulate the world around them by using their imagination will fade away. Unconsciously we discourage them from building what they imagine. I think this way we deprive them of utopian images for creating the future.

The Transitional Object in Macro Perspective As part of their high-tech art installations Aparna Rao and Søren Pors also made an artwork in which a large black fur teddy bear hangs from the ceiling. There are many little lights flickering in the fur. It contrasts the abstract notion of the universe with a familiar form of a teddy bear. Not only are the two concepts contrary, one can also see a similarity in connection with our need to give meaning to things and understand our surroundings. This starts with the teddy bear that holds our hand while discovering ‘the unknown’ world, during our first steps as a child. It will even be present in our life as adults, this desire to discover and understand the ultimate unknown area of the stars, either in a spiritual or scientific manner.

Artist David Miles also deals with this need for an object that makes us feel more secure. He made himself devices that would allow him to have more confidence; he would only dare to dance if he would hold his cardboard device. This object gets a sort of mascot effect. This works with my idea regarding the strong effect of the self-deceiving mechanism of the placebo. The mascot functions as an object that satisfies our need to forget that it is all our own responsibility. This superstition gives us the illusion that we are not alone in make decisions that affect our destinies in life, that we can get a little help from higher spirits. I find the work hilarious because of the paradoxical ironic element the device has on his appearance on the dance floor. His fear of going on the dance floor makes him so self-aware of his own movements that he will look silly in the eyes of others. But dancing with that cardboard device all of a sudden seems less silly. Perhaps he will be sure that dancing with the cardboard device will look funny anyway, that it doesn’t matter how he dances.

15. Roland Barthes, ‘Toys’ In: ‘Mythologies’ (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1957)

26 2. The Human Being as a Living Object

To create or to be created? The inventor and designer R. Buckminster Fuller argues, in his article ‘The Comprehensive Designer’ that the future totally depends on the state of technology and how designers find possibilities to use and apply this technology. It is their job to interfere with the things that still have to be invented, designed and created or at least that which can be dreamed.

Manipulating our surroundings has always been our little trick to survive in nature. We invent things because of a certain need. If we have the desire for something, then we create it, or we make tools to be able to create it. Neuroscientists claim lately that we can even modify our brain more in the direction we want, because it appears to have more plasticity than we thought. On the one hand we tend to think we live in a world that is ultimately modifiable and flexible but on the other hand there is a seemingly uncontrollable development of technology. Is our manipulative influence on the world a utopian illusion? Do we create or are we created by our surroundings?

As we could see in essay by Von Kleist, it is the self-awareness of human beings that plays a crucial role in the division between mind and matter. Technology philosopher Peter Paul Verbeek explains how this division is still very much visible today, in his interview with the design magazine ‘Morf’: “The enlightenment enabled technology and science to develop faster but it also included a sort of metaphysics: a fundamental conviction in which we divided the world in two parts, domain of human beings and domain of things. Humans have freewill and freedom of choice, whereas things do not. This made us think there is a strict border between humans and objects. This is a border that we strongly want to defend. There is subjects and there is objects, and if objects start to interfere with subjects, we tend think we are no longer human beings.”16 Ever since the cold war the thing17 has been associated with the malevolent biological materiality, as a result of our unknowing intervention into nature. The fear that Verbeek describes is part of this mythical idea on ‘the revenge of the blob, which imperils man.’ 18 This idea arose because of the nuclear development around that time. Although this topic seems less present today, I think it is still relevant. I have already shown this in the examples of the plastic microfiber pollution and the nanotechnology that is used in most products of today, which interfere with our body.

There is a complicated interaction and reciprocity between humans and technology. We created technology but technology influences our identity also. Just like an individual is created by his frame of reference, through the way he has interpret his experiences from the past, mankind is literally created by his surroundings. In that way our inventions show us who we are, upon which we can reflect and from which we can learn more about ourselves. So we constantly keep changing things, to improve our way of living.19

16. My translation of a quote from Philosopher Peter-Paul Verbeek from an interview with the design magazine Morf#15 ‘Toekomst’, (Premsela, 2011) pp. 166 17. 'The thing' is a philosophical term, that has been interpreted in several ways throughout history. 18. Elizabeth Grosz, The Thing, In: ‘The Object Reader’, Ed. by Fiona Candlin and Raiford Guins, (Routledge, 2009) pp. 124-138 19. My translation of a quote from Philosopher Peter-Paul Verbeek from an interview with the design magazine Morf#15 ‘Toekomst’, (Premsela, 2011) pp. 168

Demi-Virgin, Oil on canvas, Konrad Klapheck, 1972. In: ‘The imagery of Surrealism’ Robert Short, 1980, pp.167

28 Invisible Things Digitalization affects us more than we might realize at first sight. Not only does it change the devices that give us access to the digital world, but it also changes our relationship with things, how we perceive things and eventually it changes us, our own brain structure. Philip Zimbardo gives an interesting example in ‘The Time Paradox’. Currently more children, especially boys, drop out of school, because by the time they are ten years old they have played so many computer games that they have difficulties learning in an analogue setting. A setting in which they only listen to a teacher and have to take in information rather than being interactive, 3D as Zimbardo calls it. The former is too passive for the children of today; they want to be challenged by trying things actively themselves. It is interesting how this fast technological development made our educational system outdated. It asks for big changes in our behaviour. This fast development has made the differences between generations become bigger than ever. Internet and social media also change our way of thinking, in the sense that they have made us accustomed to the fact that our desires can get satisfied immediately, at the click of the button. It makes us less and less able to have the patience for things that take time or to stay with one thing for a longer time. We will become more impulsive and will be less able to contemplate.20

The philosopher Vilém Flusser goes even further. He sees the digital world as being ‘non-things’ of which we have no material resistance, in contrary to physical things where we constantly have to overcome material obstacles. He claims that people who deal a lot with non-things, who have less material resistance, are more attached to playing and experiencing. “This new human being in the process of being born all around us and within us is in fact without hands. He does not handle things anymore, so in his case one cannot speak of action anymore, nor of practice, nor of work for that matter. The only thing left of his hands are the tips of his fingers, which he uses to tap on keys so as to play with symbols. The new human being is not a man of action anymore but a player: homo ludens as opposed to homo faber.”21 He states it will no longer be a question of action, but of sensation.

I find this quite an impressive idea, would the future reveal in this way it would have a huge impact on our culture and society, even the anatomy of our body. In my idea this will mean we will no longer be active, at least not physically. Through time we see a development that people do more with less. Machinery takes over our tasks. This means less labor and more time, resulting in a faster society. Physical extensions are being replaced by extensions of the mind more and more. The microelectronic devices not only make things less tangible but also make data less visible. Digitalization will make more objects extinct.

Technology develops autonomously. The speed with which humans can adjust to these changes is astonishing. But as I already showed in the ‘maya’-phenomenon in design, it also seems to be a typical human feature to be strongly tradition oriented. Humans tend to be quite conservative. We only seem to accept changes when we really need a solution. Pieter Paul Verbeek discusses in his interview with the design magazine ‘Morf’ that the human relationship with technology can evoke the fear that it will overpower the human being or at least will dehumanize us. There were a lot of pessimistic philosophers during the times of the industrial revolution because developments went too quickly. But he shows that this fear is present throughout history. Plato thought that the act of writing down our thoughts instead of reciting them would mean the end of civilization. But also wearing glasses to improve our sight is in fact already making us cyborgs and we found a way to incorporate this into our lives. No matter how the technique moved, humans have always changed with it.22

20. Nicholas Carr ‘The Shallows, What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains.’ (London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010) 21. Vilém Flusser ‘The Shape of Things, A Philosophy of Design’ p.89 ‘The Non-thing 2’ (1989) quoted by Sybrand Zijlstra in: Morf#15 22. My translation of a quote from Philosopher Peter-Paul Verbeek from an interview with the design magazine Morf#15 ‘Toekomst’, (Premsela, 2011) pp. 166

Dimensions of Dialogue Part 1, Jan Švankmajer, 1982, Film-still; Object creature and vegetable creature eat one another

Dimensions of Dialogue Part 2, Jan Švankmajer, 1982, clay, toothbrush and toothpaste, Film-still; clay figures holding a conversation through objects

30 3. The Human Being as a Hybrid

Evolution of things In our daily life objects constantly surround us. They all came to exist because of a certain need. If we have the desire for something, then we create it, or we make tools to be able to create it. Objects are an extension of our body. We can learn to handle tools so well that our mind considers it as being part of our body. For instance driving a car can become so automatic, that we don’t need to think about every little movement we have to make to drive it. We learn to handle it so well that it is almost as if the movement of the car is the movement of our own body.

Writing is the extension of the memory outside of our brain. It is something that will stay when the person passes away. I think this is the first step of how technology got the chance to develop so quickly and independently. It is as if ideas propagate and undergo evolution. Every generation an individual improves a small element. This process is continuous; which keeps our inventions constantly moving. Charles Darwin saw a similarity in his evolution theory and in how our ideas develop. In Grosz’ words: ‘The dynamism of the active world of natural selection.’ This is also visible in the following quote from Adam Ferguson:

In other classes of animals, the individual advances from infancy to age or maturity; and he attains, in the compass of a single life, to all the perfection his nature can reach: but, in the human kind, the species has a progress as well as the individual; they build in every subsequent age on foundations formerly laid.23

Equilibrium Elizabeth Grosz has been seeking another idea how to perceive the thing different from the one that came to exist during the Enlightment. Kant and Descartes saw the thing as something to which we measured ourselves and our limits, as being the mirror of what we are not. I think this idea on the material world is still visible presently, as the last chapter shows there is still a strong alienation from the subject. Grosz mentions Darwin’s idea that the thing is not conceived as ‘the other’. She discusses in ‘The Thing’ that Darwin does not perceive it as something we cannot know, but that he sees the thing more as something we make and find our self. As the object came to exist out of the shortcomings of our body, Grosz sees it as an artificial organ. The word ‘organ’ is etymologically related to ‘instrument’, ‘that with which one works’ and derived from the Greek word ergon which means ‘work’.

Objects are literally an organ of our body. Putting it this way it would be easier to blur the boundary between human beings and machines.24 Donna Haraway uses the cyborg imagery in her essay ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ to show a proposal on how we could perceive the development of humanity. As Haraway says: "Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves."25 Peter Paul Verbeek states that If we would abrogate the dichotomy between nature and technology, it will become easier to understand and accept that technology will improve humans; it will make us able to face our future that is strongly influenced by technology. Where Nietzsche stated that the übermensch would be invented beyond humanity, Verbeek claims that ‘the new übermensch’ will mean that we find an ethically responsible way to guide and deal with what technology offers us.26

23. Adam Ferguson ‘An Essay on the History of Civil Society’ quoted by Matt Ridley in the Rational Optimist. 24. Elizabeth Grosz, The Thing, In: ‘The Object Reader’, Ed. by Fiona Candlin and Raiford Guins, (Routledge, 2009) 25. Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," In: Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991), pp. 181 26. My translation of a quote from Philosopher Peter-Paul Verbeek De Ubermensch, Opnieuw In: Morf#15 ‘Toekomst’, (Premsela, 2011) pp. 174

Dimensions of Dialogue Part 2, Jan Švankmajer, 1982, Film-stills; clay, human and thing

32 Conclusion

For me The Living Object is a hybrid of two contrasting elements. The object comes alive when there is an interesting tension in the contrast between something we can relate to and something we cannot place and which will keep us puzzling. When we know an object completely, we will not notice its presence and it will fade away in the everyday surroundings, unless it is taken out of its context, as the surrealists did for instance, or if the object has a special emotional value. When we do not know the object at all, it will not touch us and thus will play less with our imagination. So there has to be a right balance of both elements within the object, for it to appeal to us. In the search for how two contrary elements are able to be embodied within one object I came to the following conclusion: the degree of influence between the elements in a hybrid come in gradations and during the making process there is an aim for balance. This equilibrium is unachievable because changing outside influences will throw it off balance again. Equilibrium is just a state between the fluctuations of the two extremes and this is ever changing, but as soon as it is caught within an object it is temporarily fixed.

The second thing I realized is that the living object exists in the eye of the beholder by suspension of disbelief. In principle every object can come alive if we use our imagination. We will never be able to see things as they really are, because we will always be bound to perception and interpretation. In fact we live in an illusion of subjective beliefs and even our self-awareness causes blind spots. We need our own beliefs to understand the world and we need to categorize things to grasp them.

The distinction between humans and things makes us consider the thing as the other, a mirror of what we are not. In a making process we will be confronted with the characteristics of substance and this makes us realize what we are capable of and what we are not. But because we create our creations and our creations create us, we can abrogate the dichotomy between humans and things. The contrast between humans and things would then no longer be a contradiction but a synthesis.

Technology develops autonomously and deals preeminently with what is not there yet and still has to be invented. This can evoke fear about the unknown future. We tend to need the idea that we can, or at least up to a certain extent, manipulate our surroundings and our future to feel secure. I consider this quality as a remnant of the transitional phenomena in which we chose an object to replace our mother to imagine our desires will be fulfilled so we can control new situations. ‘Answers’, ‘understanding’ and declaring things as ‘truth’ would then function as an illusion to feel safe because we cannot control the future and the unknown. The following questions arise: if exactly the not-knowing is a quality of art and the suspension of disbelief allows us to let go of our preconceptions, can art, itself being illusion by creating fictional worlds, make us aware of our own illusions? Or would art function as a transitional object? The transitional phenomena would at least explain why we are able to get emotionally attached to objects.

Not only do tangible objects function as transitional phenomena, music can also have a similar effect. The melody and the way the specific version of a song is played are essential elements that made a great impact on me during the first period of my life. The effect stays with me today. The following comes from one of the pieces of music that played an important role in the transitional phenomena of my childhood. I have chosen a phrase that clearly shows the conclusion that I derive in this thesis:

“If my heart could do my thinking And my head begin to feel, I would look upon the world anew And know what's truly real.” – Van Morrison

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