Aesthetic Experience

Running Head: FEELING THOUGH OBJECTS

Feeling though Objects

By Richard Clarkson Tutor: Johann Nortje CCDN231

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I have yet to experience any of the great installations from form Richard Serra or Robert Irwin and many other artists and designers though I plan to see and experience these in the coming years of my life. I have however experienced some less monumental aesthetic experiences that have greatly affected the way I interact with certain objects; the two major examples are sheepskin rugs, and specific types of music. These are both very personal experiences each with its own connotations and memories attached to it. Theses and other moments and experiences make up who I am, they are the events that shape my life and they are the moments I look forward to living in the future.

A sheepskin rug’s aesthetic experience comes from its texture and its smell and is something that for me is deeply ingrained in my past. As a baby I played, ate, slept and was even changed on a sheepskin rug. The touch of it on either hands feet or body is a soft warm feeling of home and family that no other object can accomplish. For me a sheepskin rug starts to become more than just an object, it becomes a feeling in its purest form. This ability of objects and artifacts to carry memories and feelings is what my project is about; I want people to realize the relationships we form with the objects that surround us and begin understand the experiences we gain from them.

Though music is not an object as such it has the same effect on me as a sheepskin rug. Particular songs bring memories of the first time I heard the song, where I heard it, who I listened to it with, what mood I was in and what I was doing when I first heard it. In terms of memory producing ability I argue that music can rival that of a photograph. Ask yourself why we take photographs and you will find that it is almost always to freeze a moment in time for referral at a later date. The thousands of photos that sit hidden away in photo albums are a testament to this. We keep these albums for times when we wish to re-experience the

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moments captured. This re-experiencing aspect in music and objects is something that is yet to be fully explored and is a strong point in my project.

In project two of this paper I looked at the haptic sensory experience of the word “precession,” which I expressed as a hidden needle which the user had to experiment with and interact with in order to activate it. The experience was also a challenge to the user to balance on the point of the needle and remain on it creating a very fine line between play and pain.

This essence of a playful challenge is what I transferred to an artifact that is worn on the back of the neck by a user according to a specific schedule. The challenge of my artifact is for the user to achieve perfect posture in keeping a perfectly vertical spine, if the user is not within this safe zone he/she will receive a small electric shock as motivation to correct their posture. It consists of a modified “electric shock trick pen,” two horizontal mercury switches in opposite directions and an ergonomically designed neck contact with two electrodes on the right and left side of the Sternocleidomastoid muscle, a muscle on both sides of the neck that when triggered with a small electric shock causes the head to tilt to the triggered side and rotate so that the face is turned upwards towards the opposite side. (James H. Clay, 2008, p. 100) As the mercury switches are connected separately I used this to my advantage to pinpoint where the electric shock would hit, I could also decide which side it would happen on, the obvious method would be to shock the user on the same as that they were leaning to so they would back away from the shock back into the safe zone. However to make things more interesting and to add an element of humor to my object I put the shock on the opposite side, this means the user must lean towards the shock, a completely unnatural reaction to an electric shock. All of these aspects and twists are to get the user thinking about the relationships we can develop with objects and to get the user to truly experience them to the full. To ensure the user can gain the most benefit from my object the schedule is progressive, thus as the user becomes more comfortable with it each day the amount of required usage goes up.

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Overall I have focused on creating an object that is as much about the users thought proses as it is about the aesthetic experience. For me this was an opportunity to share what I believe to be at the very core of our social beings, our feelings, as represented though objects and artifacts.

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Bibliography Dewey, J. (1980). Art as Experience. New York: Perigee Trade.

James H. Clay, D. M. (2008). Basic clinical massage therapy: integrating anatomy and treatment. Baltimore: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

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