Monday, October 6, 2014

Readings Response: Emotions and Things

Things often resonate with people is different ways. The material that people interact with throughout their lives can trigger emotions and memories, and can provide a point of access to share those emotions and memories with others.

Kay Healy’s “Lost and Found” was a wall instillation at the Free Library of Philadelphia that featured rooms with objects that the artist made from people’s recollections of things that they once possessed but are now lost. The people selected all have emotional stories that connect the thing they have lost to their life and draw out larger lessons about concepts of family and home. On one hand, asking people to talk about a lost thing they wish they could still have is a set-up that required respondents to feel an emotional attachment to their objects as a prerequisite for participation. On the other hand, the lost and found motif is extraordinarily relatable and prompts listeners to think about their things and what they would say if asked the same question.

This American Life’s “House on Loon Lake” tells the story of a young boy who broke into an abandoned home and became enthralled in the mystery of the family that once lived there. Where Healy told the stories of object that people longed for, this story was about one that people consciously abandoned. The conclusions of this story, though sad, offered perspective on how and why people sometimes choose to leave the past in the past, whereas others, like the narrator or any of Healy’s interviewees desired to hold onto it.

The Radio Lab episode “Things” more directly contemplates the emotional connections people form with things. At one point in the episode, the presenters discuss whether a 3D print of a sugar egg that resonates with childhood memories means the same as the original. In the end, the process of making a new egg with a child turned out to be more meaningful than a 3D print could have been. Talking about the difference between things that have a physical connection to people led to a discussion of what one presenter called the “unbridgeable gulf” between people and the things that people make with technology. This conversation highlighted the role of human imagination in making things powerful. The ability to touch something and think about how someone made it, what they did with it, and what it meant to them may be the most important part of studying material culture.

Sam Roberts’ “Object Lessons in History” speculates about the popular surge of object-based histories that the three previous works arguably feed into. Acknowledging that material culture is a great way to lure people into history, the article points to correlations between more recent object histories and contemporary reality television. This link that Roberts makes between momentary popular trends and object histories makes me think about whether the relationships that people currently have with material things are the same relationships that people in the past had with material things. How would Kay Healy’s project be different if it revolved around people 500 years ago, or 50 years from now?

Powder Horn Reflections: The works covered this week largely had to do with how people look back upon things and how they use things to look back. The powder horn, passed down through generations, could have been handled as a vehicle for some story about the past that the family relayed to every succeeding generation. Its owners could have looked at it in the same way Radio Lab’s presenter looked at the Neil Armstrong letter and asked many of the same questions. Thinking about that letter, the presenters wondered whether the letter being typed instead of handwritten affected its meaning, if the emotional connection to the letter would be the same even if Neil Armstrong never actually touched the thing. For my powder horn, this is an integral question because I have no proof yet that the horn ever belonged to General Braddock, nevertheless the care of the horn implies that it was important to the family.


Works Cited:



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