User:Niek Hilkmann/Project Proposal

1. The past, the present and the future

Earliest Known Image of the dodo, 1601

Few things are as fuzzy and attractive as the past. It is a concept that is never physically present, though its traces are everywhere. The most appealing bit about it might be its tangibility. One can never presently encounter in the flesh what has already transpired and that is why it is possible to make things up without any ancient characters complaining. The only thing one has to account for within historical practice are the concrete objects that actually bore witness to past events and are now collecting fungi within the recycled air of archives and libraries. In this way, inanimate objects are the stuff historical knowledge is built upon.

Objects that are now being used as historical sources were once everyday tools or ordinary accounts. They were made and used by actual living beings with thoughts and feelings, but at one point in time they simply stopped being issued. The objects became redundant and stranded outside the field of everyday use. Even though the items and persons who used them are not seen on the streets anymore, they still have a very real place within contemporary society. Besides their economic value, historians and collectors are attracted and attached to them because of their esthetic value and the stories behind them. It is possible to project feelings and ideas upon them. Sometimes, such ideas lead to very elaborate narrative constructions, which are retold and reshaped over and over again and get new contemporary uses. It often occurs that old objects become part of a brand new ideology or story, either as an icon or as a brand new tool incorporating elements of the past item.

This is possible by means of reissuing which necessarily relies on past objects and sources. Nowadays, different interpretations of an endless variety of subjects can be found on the web and in digital libraries. Each one is equally represented and can be used as material for any sort of reissue. Every alternative to a conclusive past is a starting point for an alternative route that was not taken before. There are for instance certain technologies or philosophies that didn’t catch on in the time when they were proposed, but are now being used as a speculative approach to the past, present or future. As such, the past appears to be a relative subject outside the reach of a practical 'truth', since it can be bended and shaped by the ‘human mind’, which is the only true contemporary container of memory. However, something gets lost within these new narratives and a speculative fixation contributes to this cultural misinterpretation. The true metaphysical meaning of objects, by which I mean its particular essence, is misshapen within the process of romantic speculation and sentimental relativism.

2. Up, close and personal

A Dugong dressed up as a mermaid in Aden, Yemen

One question I continually ask myself is what it means when an object becomes redundant or is being reissued. I'm addicted to looking for uncommon items that one could categorize as redundant technology in thrift stores and the like. Sometimes, I incorporate these within my work, to see if I can bring them back from retirement. This is pretty evident in the VHS projects I have worked on during the last year or so. Besides actually making movies on VHS, I organized an animation workshop and a talkshow about the sustainability of the medium. This concept is also present in my work as a musician, for instance when working with the 'Tip Top Orchestra' where 20th century elitist avant-garde music was repurposed within an contemporary amateur discourse.

I am probably attracted to past objects because of their hazy character, which I tried to describe in the previous part of this proposal. Because they are open to endless speculation, they are irresistible. However, there is something more going on. I wonder what it means to become redundant and reissued myself. I am very much aware, during my gloomy days, that at some point in time I will die and this might very well be the end of all my subjective thoughts and feelings. My living essence, whatever that is, might get lost with me being gone, but something else will take its place. During my lifetime I willingly and unwillingly leave behind traces that might help to construct narratives. This might turn me into an icon, but it might also be the case that I become a mere demographic example or a corpse on the graveyard. Something certainly gets lost and something takes its place by means of a human interest for the past. I wonder what this is and what it means to get lost in translation.

This is the question on which I will focus myself during my graduation year. To answer it I will look at different approaches by which historical sources are handled, some pre-digital and some that are being enforced by digital tools. I am curious what kind of metaphysical estrangement they constitute and how they do this. Certain specified objects such as dodecaeders, mummies, mermaids, african fetishes, narwhal teeth and the image of the dodo will be taken as historical examples of this shifting of meaning and essence. I will delve deeper within the different metaphysical approaches to objects, for instance by means of object orientated ontology and Heideggerian phenomenology. In this way I will be able to specify what exactly gets lost within historical reissuing and what this could mean.

3. Dead as a dodo

Dodo Drama

My thesis will be an historical study with a hint of metaphysics and my final project will be something that adds to this. However, it will not be the mere documentation or illustration of the research I will undertake in the months before it. At the end of the year I will present a singular work. I believe the metamorphosis on which I want to focus, specifically the cultural misinterpretation of objects and the problems in essence they constitute, are something fundamentally human of which many examples can be found. To study these is the best way to start working and get some grasp on the matter.

I have started researching the image on the dodo, which is both an extinct bird that used to live on Mauritius and an icon for extinction. One of the most startling facts about the dodo is how few physical remains the creature has actually left behind. These can be divided in three groups: written accounts, pictures and physical remains. Of these some are disputed and some have only come to light during the last 150 years. For centuries the dodo was an obscure animal in which only the most dedicated biologists took an interest. For some time scientists even disputed the fact that the creature ever existed because of the limited amount of material. Not until the publication of 'Alice In Wonderland' in 1865 did the dodo start its rise to fame. The image of the fat, helpless extinct creature, inspired by the portrait of Roelandt Savery, took the place of whatever living creature there might have been. This shift in imagery is very illustrative of what I want to focus on with my project and because of that I made an animation movie about it called 'Dodo Drama'.

I will turn my research into something concrete by means of an installation incorporating sound, image, light and animatronics. Objects of the past are orchestrated and manipulated to narrate a false, mutated history in the form of a 10 minute show bearing similarities to the type that can be found in amusement parks. One important factor in this show is the use of animation, for enforcing an human will upon inanimate objects to construct a narrative is the start of any form of essential misinterpretation. This happens within an analytic triangle of the narrator, narration and reader. This entire process will be clearly present in my final work. Everything together will tell the story of the struggle between mankind and its past and future by means of insensitive objects.

4. Literature

Dodo

• The Dodo: From Extinction to Icon, Erroll Fuller, 2003.
• The Song of the Dodo, David Quammen, 1997.
• Return of the Crazy Bird: The Sad, Strange Tale of the Dodo, 2003.
• The dodo and its kindred or, The history, affinities, and osteology of the dodo, solitaire, and other extinct birds of the islands Mauritius, Rodriguez and Bourbon, H. E. Strickland and A.G. Melville, 1848.
• Alice In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, 1865.
• Dodos Are Forever, Dick King-Smith, 1989.

Media

• Evil Media, Matthew Fuller and Andrew Goffey, 2012.
• Anti-Media: Ephemera On Speculative Arts, Florian Cramer, 2013.
• Remediation: Understanding New Media, Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, 2000.
• Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects, Graham Harman, 2002.
• Guerilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things, Graham Harman, 2005.
• The Democracy of Objects, Levi Bryant, 2011.
• Alien Phenomenology, or What It's Like to Be a Thing, Ian Bogost, 2012.
• Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Jane Bennett, 2009.
• The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places, B. Reeves, B and C. Nass, 1996.
• Machines and mindlessness: Social responses to computers, C. Nass, C and Y. Moon, 2000.
• You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, Jaron Lanier, 2011.

Furthermore

• The Follies of Science at the Court of Rudolph II, 1576-1612, Henry Carrington Bolton, 1904.
• The Future Of Nostalgia, Svetlana Boym, 2002.
• When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, 1996.
• The Complete Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales, Hans Christian Andersen, 1981.
• Sein Und Zeit, Martin Heidegger, 1927.
• The Brave Little Toaster from Print to Film: Obsolescent Appliances and Capitalist Allegories, Margaret D. Stetz, Opticon 1826, 14: 21-26, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/opt.aj, 2012.
• The Brave Little Toaster, Thomas M. Disch, 1980.