User:Niek Hilkmann/Project Proposal

The Deal

Few 'things' are as vague and attractive as the past. It is a concept that is never really present, though it's traces are everywhere. The most appealing bit about the past might be it's tangibility. One can never physically encounter what has happened in everyday life and as such one is able to make things up about it without any historical characters complaining. The only thing one has to account for in this matter are concrete objects collecting fungi in moist basements that were actually present when the past occurred. As such, inanimate objects are the stuff culture and history is built upon. Once 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 at this point and stopped being part of any contemporary discourse.

Or are they? Even though objects and the persons who used them are not literally being seen on the street anymore, they still have a very real place within society. Historians and collectors are attracted and attached to objects and the stories behind them. They are able 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 uses within current times. Sometimes they even become part of a brand new ideology or story, either as an icon or as a brand new object incorporating elements of the past item. This is possible by way of reissuing which necessarily relies on past objects and sources.

Nowadays, different interpretations of an endless variety of subjects and objects can be found on the web and in digital libraries. Each one is equally represented and as true as any other historical document. By this I mean that every alternative to a conclusive past is an option or a vantage point for a contemporary route that was not taken beforehand. Take 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 present or future. As such, the past appears to be a relative subject outside the reach of '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 translated new narratives and the web constitutes this cultural misinterpretation. The true meaning of objects, by which I mean it's particular essence, shifts between romantic speculation and sentimental relativism. One question I continually ask myself is what it means when an object becomes redundant or is being reissued, as I demonstrated by repurposing 20th century elitist avant-garde music and everyday cartoon VHS-tapes. While I am not a psychologist, I think that I probably contemplate on this because I wonder what it means to be redundant and reissued myself. At one point in time I will die and leave behind traces that might help to construct a narrative. I wonder what it essentially means to get lost in translation. This is the question on which I want to focus during my graduation year. To answer it I will look at different approaches to the handling of historical sources, some pre-digital and some that are being enforced by the web. I am curious what kind of metaphysical estrangement they constitute and how they do this. Certain specified objects such as the dodecaeder, the narwal tooth, John Dee's speculum and the image of the dodo will be taken as an historical example of this shifting of meaning and essence.

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 your will upon inanimate objects to construct a narrative is the start of any form of romantic misinterpretation. I should point out that every form of misinterpretation consists within a triangle of the narrator, narration and reader. When enforced upon an object, we encounter the start of misinterpretation. This entire process will be present in my final work. Everything together will tell the story of the struggle between mankind and it's past and future by means of insensitive objects.

Proposed Literature

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.
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.

Key Texts

Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects, Graham Harman, 2002.
The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places, B. Reeves and C. Nass, 1996.
Evil Media, Matthew Fuller and Andrew Goffey, 2012.
Sein Und Zeit, Martin Heidegger, 1927.
The Brave Little Toaster, Thomas M. Disch, 1980.