Our over exposure to common objects results in us viewing them in a synecdochic fashion. We disregard the complex nature of objects, our overuse of them obfuscates their identity, hindering our appreciation of them, limiting our experience of them. We don’t see a bowl when we use a bowl. Instead we see a stack of bowls, a bowl full of food, a dirty bowl, a drying bowl, a bowl to be put away, a stack of bowls. The accoutrements feel inseparable, but changeable. The moments that a bowl is isolated are rare and feel incomplete.
Bowls are and always have been in extreme proximity to us, they are not introduced to us in a state where we can examine them as a novelty, but as underdeveloped beings who have no choice but to take objects as fait accompli. The bowl fades to beyond the periphery, to join the amalgam of unconsidered but consequential things that dictate countless aspects of our experience.
By distilling an object to its component characteristics we can change our perspective of it and gain a new appreciation for the object from a distance. In using a bowl we look through it, ignoring it, but removing the bowl and revealing the characteristics that comprise it is to see the bowl. To see the bowl from a distance is to see the bowl no longer as a bowl, but as a complex entity. Distance allows understanding, to be far allows us to draw near.
Removing the physical form enables new ways of looking at things. Without scale, location, material, texture, density, or any other property tied to the physical world we can reveal the true diversity of application for forms. This form is nothing. It was designed with no purpose, with no properties and with no physicality. It was then reconsidered and re-contextualised to explore the potentials of reinterpreting an object.
1. Fruit Bowl (Digital Composite)
2. Chopstick Rest (3D Print)
3. Caltrop Launcher (Digital Composite)
4. Concave Sliding Base Isolation Unit (Digital Composite)
5. Building (Digital Composite)
6. Static Anti-tank Obstacles (Digital Composite)
This piece shows the transitional nature of a bowl. Where upon this continuum of forms does a bowl begin and a bowl end? How many cups appear here, and how many plates?
The form here shows a representation of 43 objects. A plate, a cup, and a bowl, with 40 variations.