Research Paper - Final Submitted December 1, 2010

For this research paper, we were asked to address a theoretical concern central to our practice. Below is the first part that includes my research question, the abstract, as well as the keywords. The end result paper is available on the following link: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0Bz-6Qx7Ge00zYzY4NGYxOGYtNDllNC00M2ZmLTkzMTYtNWE4OGY0YjE0MWEz&hl=en

Research Question:

Transitional digital objects: Fluidity in compositing an autobiography or a failure to create a portrait of the whole?

Abstract:

The paper explores the transitional aspect of digital objects in relation to autobiography. D.W. Winnicott (1971) coined the term ‘transitional objects’; it travels around the theme of object and fantasy. The paper assumes the fluid nature of digital objects, ‘a new media object’ could be ‘variable, mutable, liquid’ as per Manovich’s (2001) definition. Placing autobiography as the aim from transitional digital objects manipulation, the paper questions whether the fluidity will act as a facilitator to autobiographical visual compositing or will it fail to create a portrait of the whole?

The first part is dedicated to looking at the fluidity of digital objects through observing and relating theories and artworks of practitioners who have investigated the theme object. Mark Leckey (2008) exemplifies the dissolved physical into a digital object at the beginning of the century and by its end; Hollis Frampton (1969) doubts the object’s third dimensionality on the screen; Sherry Turkle (2007) emphasizes the emotional in objects; whereas Donna Haraway (1991) rejects the concept of objects being sacred in themselves; the Cult of Less (2009) upload their material lives on external hard drives and online services platforms; and Michael Craig-Martin (1973) challenges belief through a glass of water, a shelf and a printed text in his sculpture An Oak Tree.

The second part is focused on autobiography compositing. Different autobiographical manifestations come together to reach the final conclusion later. Christiane Paul (2008) defines the new nomadic nature; Mark Amerika (2007) speaks of the ‘hyperimprovisational narrative artist’ in Meta/Data; William Burroughs (1970) discusses the viral in the language; and Marcel Proust (1913) gives a lesson in generative autobiographical storytelling and involuntary memory in his book Remembrance of Things Past, specifically the episode of the Madeleine; Lev Manovich (2005) concludes this section with his compositing in the digital realm theory that leads to ‘deep remixability’.

The conclusion is preceded by notes on ‘recollection’ according to Mark Freeman (1995) and the ‘wholistic fictionalization of the past’ by Michel Foucault (1973) as well as Nietzsche’s (1889) statement of ‘the whole’ that ‘no longer lives at all: it is composed, reckoned up, artificial, a fictitious thing’.

The findings of the paper affirm the fluidity of autobiographical compositing through transitional digital objects as well as the failure of creating the portrait of the whole but do not judge the latter conclusion as necessarily inconvenient.

Keywords:

New Media Object – Autobiographical Compositing – Transitional – Fluidity – Wholeness

Objects as clutter, as emotional and intellectual companions, as reflective of historical periods.

I have been reading about the cult of less, an initiative by a young software engineer, Kelly Sutton, to get rid of everything he owns by digitizing all his possessions, and then keeping the few cherished objects, selling the ones that could benefit other people and ship the rest of the goods he owns but don’t interest him.

In a BBC interview, Kelly is described as the '21st-Century minimalist’; he says he “got rid of much of his clutter because he felt the ever-increasing number of available digital goods have provided adequate replacements for his former physical possessions.” He got rid of most of his assets, apart from his iPad, Kindle, laptop and a few other items, replacing his actual records with mp3s, his photographs are now digitized and uploaded on Flickr, he credits his external hard drives and online services like Hulu, Facebook, Skype and Google Maps for allowing him to lead a minimalist life.

Other people seem to be following the same trend, that of dissolving the objects into digital data and living “clutter-less” and “light”.

In a further research, Sherry Turkle, current director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, writes in “Evocative Objects” about the power everyday things, she cherishes objects as “emotional and intellectual companions that anchor memory, sustain relationships, and provoke new ideas. According to Turkle, “the simplest objects are shown to bring philosophy down to earth” and her idea of “evocative objects” goes far to say that objects carry both ideas and passion. And the role of objects she discusses in her book vary from design and play, to discipline and desire, history and exchange, mourning and memory, transition and passage, meditation and new vision.

On another note, I was at the British Museum few days ago and I got to see one of the shows that they have created along with BBC Radio 4 series. The show is “A history of the World in 100 objects”, the idea being a series of selected objects grouped together to give meaning to the historical context and make connections across the world. Each grouped series explore a common theme and portray a certain era.

So on Sherry Turkle’s list of describing the objects, I would add, objects as mapping tools, and objects as reflective of history, and objects as clutter (based on the British Museum experience and the Kelly Sutton cult).

Now art and design seem to be always reflective of the context, and here I figured so are objects.

Research Paper - Updates on the idea of Objects

In the last chat session Matt informed me about his friend (Alan Manley) who has written his MA paper on objects & memory. I emailed Alan, his MA thesis was lost on an unrecovered old laptop, but instead he gave me a generous list of resources to check:

Campbell, C.; The Craft Consumer: Culture, Craft, Consumption in a Post-Modern Society, Journal of Consumer Culture 5 (1) p. 24, March 2005

Csikszentmihalyi, M. and Rochberg-Halton, E.; The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1981.

Dyson, L.; Collecting practices and autobiography: the role of objects in the mnemonic landscape of nation (chapter five), Temporality Autobiography and Everyday life, Manchester University Press, Manchester U.K., 2002.

Higgins, J.; Memory Shelf and Memory Teapot; found at http://www.hhc.rca.ac.uk/archive/hhrc/programmes/ra/2003/jac.html Accessed on 11 Mar. 09.

Hoven, E. van den; Graspable Cues for Everyday Recollecting, Ph.D thesis, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, 2004.

Casey, E. S.; Remembering: A Phenomenological Study, Indiana University Press, U.S.A., 2000.

Milekic, Slavko.; Toward Tangible Virtualities: Tangialities; Ch.18 in Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage , MIT Press, U.S.A. 2007.

Also I was advised to search for Sherry Turkle who has written a lot about objects/memory.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Evocative-Objects-Things-We-Think/dp/0262201682/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277840601&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Inner-History-Devices-S-Turkle/dp/0262201763/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277840601&sr=1-3

An easy intro in 'emotional design: or why we love or hate everything' by Donald Norman.

Matt also told me to check a Srishti based artist in residence called Michelle Cherian who is also interested in the idea of objects and attachment/memory, I checked her website http://www.tankandbear.com/michelle/

An interesting project she has created is entitled: ‘Shoppingsfree’, a simulated ‘pseudo store’. Michelle describes the projects: “photographs of objects and experiences line the walls. Each item has a title and price. Participants are all given the same amount of imaginary money to shop with. After they are done shopping they take their photographs to the sales counter and get a receipt of their "purchases." Next, shoppers have their portrait photograph taken and this along with a scan of their receipt gets printed and displayed on a collective wall. Shoppingsfree begins with instilling desire and ends with identity building through the act of possession.”

Her project has got an interesting repercussion, it took me suddenly to the idea of the library, and I remembered an intricate character, a classmate during school days, who ‘wanting to be a Marxist’, kept on randomly repeating citations from Marx’s theories, his favorite being: “private property is theft”… then he would steal all the Jean Cocteau books from the school library to upgrade his books collection at home, and when you ask him to return the books so you could borrow them, he would answer, nobody understands Cocteau as I do, “these ignorants” are not qualified to read Cocteau, a little anecdote that describes a complexity of a Marxist collector… Add to it the fact that his name was Ernesto!

We also checked Matt’s Matchboxes collection http://www.matt-lee.com/index.php?/photos/indian-matchboxes/ Matt says that these matchboxes remind him of memories or of the places he has been, which was a good debut that opened up to themes that could be researched when discussing objects of symbolic reference recorded as ordinary.

Here a thorough list of alleys that could be included in the theme:
- Visual signifiers
- Mapping memories
- Functionality
- Analyzing Objects
- Enjoying Objects
- Series
- Walter Benjamin’s “the Collector”
- Mundane objects
- Categorizing Objects
- Abstract Objects vs. Functional Objects
- Possession