We are interacting with thousands of different objects everyday. The interaction can be either physical or psychological. We use bottles to drink water, sleep on beds, and live in concrete buildings. We think of loved ones when looking at a photo album, pray to necklace which contains a memory, and sometimes sit on a bench where a sad story happened. All these artificial objects, come from certain human needs, either basic or abstract ones.
Objects and Human Needs
In the article written by Mihaly Csiksentmihalyi, he said that artifacts help us to objectify ourselves by demonstrating our power, revealing the continuity of the self through time, and giving evidence of one’s place in a social network. In this way, object become a medium that connects human’s inner self with outside reality. As we don’t have fully understand of our consciousness and we are lack of self-regulation, it is necessary to have external agencies to help us stabilize our life. By building this kind of connections, we are going to be more aware of the relationships between identities.
Talking about self identification, I think mirrors can be an obvious example of how we use artifacts to strengthen our self-consciousness. With this simple magic use of light, we are able to see our appearance clearly from the reflections and in this way get a concrete evidence of our existence. Taking photos as another example, by saving instantaneous image into a physical object, photos become a carrier of memory and emotion at that certain moment. By looking at a family photo album, we can remember every emotional moment and realize the tight bond between members. In this way photos become a extension of relationship as well as memory.
Objects and Experience
In Dunne&Raby’s proposal, designed products “can function as a medium of producing complex psychological experience” by what they do, rather than how they look and feel. When looking at an innovative product, or even just thinking of the concept, we can easily imagine the whole experience of us interacting with it spontaneously. When thinking of the Truth Phone, although it wasn’t designed to fit a “correct” needs, we are able to get the narrative of psychological experience at once. In this case, artificial objects become a strong reflection of internal human desire, whether it’s morally right or wrong. It in some way forces the audience to face imperfections of human beings, just like what a mirror does.
From another angle, I once read The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility by Walter Benjamin. He argues that although all of human made objects can be reproduced, “In even the most perfect reproduction, one thing is lacking: the here and now of the work of art—its unique existence in a particular place. It is this unique existence—and nothing else—that bears the mark of the history to which the work has been subject. This history includes changes to the physical structure of the work over time, together with any changes in ownership.” The uniqueness of an object is caused not only by itself, but also by traces that time leaves on it. It is the reason why we can have very irreplaceable emotional bond with certain objects.
Questions
Do you agree with the opinion that the less inner control we have, the more we’ll rely on objects?
What’s the difference between seeing an original painting at a museum and seeing the reproduction of it from screens / books? How does the form of an object influence people’s feeling?
References