For this research page, I would like to explore more about material culture, or from what I understand currently, about the study of objects in terms of their qualities, materials and then leading to their relationship with us human. I wish to gain some insight from this research to apply to my own project.

19 Jan ’20

Book Research

The Object Reader by Fiona Candlin and Raiford Guins

Published by Routledge in 2009

Below are what I found interested from the reading,

• (p.2) “Philosophical usage of the word ‘object’ has, within the Western tradition, been aligned with a ‘thing which is perceived’, a thing that is external ‘from the apprehending mind, subject, or self’. ‘Object’ commonly refers to ‘material thing(s)’ that, like the various objects mentioned above, are ‘presented to the eyes or other sense’.” <- These notion of defining the meaning of object made me think about whether can I define myself as an object if only I just perceive it in a mirror or from pictures? Does the action of capturing a photograph of myself objectifying myself?
• (p.2) “These things also fulfil another etymology of the word ‘object’, namely ‘that to which action, or thought or feeling is directed, the thing (or person) to which something is done’. In this sense objects can also be human, animal or vegetable, as well as mineral or synthetic. A person, poodle, turnip or a pink brocade sofa can all be potential objects, albeit in rather different ways. The category ‘object’ does not convincingly divide the natural from the artificial world, the material from the immaterial, the animate and the inanimate, or the human from the non-human.” <- This made me started to think about how about the term ‘subject’. What does it mean by that.
• At this point, I realised, could it be from the blur lines between human as object or subject in stop-motion animation that caught my interest rather than in traditional 2d animation which it might be perceived as rather an object entirely.
• (p.9) “Barthes’s cultural critique is aimed at the objects and practices constitutive of French daily life in the post-war period. His reading of French toys in the modestly titled ‘Toys’ essay asserts that toys prepare children for (gendered) social roles and teach them to become users as opposed to creators.”
• (p.406) “For Marx: a product becomes a real product only by being consumed. For example, a garment becomes a real garment only in the act of being worn; a house where no one lives is in fact not a real house; thus the product, unlike a mere natural object, proves itself to be, becomes, a product only through consumption. Only by decomposing the product does consumption give the product the finishing touch […].”