THE VIRTUAL CERAMIC OBJECT - FLAT AND FAST INTERACTION

A visit I had a few months ago to the London Mithraeum got me thinking about the ways that we, in contemporary society, often experience objects through screens. The Mithraeum is a Bloomberg project, where huge investment allows for their collection of artefacts, found at the site, to be impeccably well presented. They are displayed in a glass fronted case; each individual object sits at the end of a metal armature holding it slightly out from the wall, as if floating, for viewers to observe. The experience of viewing these objects is accompanied by a touch screen i-pad with a sort of blue-print grid display of the wall and the ability for viewers to swipe left, right and zoom in and out, of each image of each object, virtually delving into its history.

Most objects displayed would have had a utilitarian everyday purpose, the grinding wear of a pestle and mortar’s use is evident by the hole in its base worn thin by the repetitive actions of daily life.

I sit out on a limb for you, my viewer – I collect you daily, I prefer some… to others… Fragment as the Museum Artefact

Long gone are the days of touch, I used to be held continuously by hands or mud, by the rest of my body… a continuation of my form, by the clay I came from, the ground, the earth - clay.

I sit silent.

Perched upon this stand, minimal contact is their preference and context is key to understanding me…

But I lack the information to tell you everything, perhaps just enough to intrigue, to keep you searching and collecting.

I’ve been here long before you, from the earth, My maker was a preservationist too, see the thumb mark on my side. Thousands of years have passed, and I feel it still, Pressing in, Nestling in, Pressed in, I have been frozen in time, touch is the only warmth, since the flames forged me.

The digital image is seen remotely from the object in pixels and light. It seems that the preference of most viewers at the London Mithraeum that day was to flick furiously through the i-pad rather than to look more closely at the actual physical objects. That said, the objects on display are still detached from our immediate space, so without the possibility of touching their surface, tactile engagement with the object is substituted for sliding our fingertips over flat, smooth screens, which inherently also offers a quick view of changing imagery easily distracting us from the real thing. This kind of flat interaction relies purely on what we can see but to read objects properly I propose that touch is required.

‘the sense of touch is vitally important in the appreciation of any plastic art, sculpture no less than pottery. But we Westerners are not allowed to handle things in our museums; we have been brought up in a culture dominated overwhelmingly by graphic images addressed solely to the eye. Nowadays, as well, we live out our lives besieged by arts based upon various kinds of photographs…and make no appeal at all to any other senses.’19

Back in the 1970s Philip Rawson expressed similar ideas to my own around tactile engagement and the need for touch. However in the seventies the internet didn’t

19 Philip Rawson, ‘Tactile Values’ in Ceramics (London: Oxford University Press, 1971) P. 19

exist in the way we know and understand it now and since the eighties, advancements in computer technology have been vast.20 We rely less and less on tactile engagement for information and this is especially true of our experience during lockdown, without face to face interaction we rely on what can be provided by the internet to take ourselves out of our immediate living space.

As makers, artists and especially as viewers the way we experience works of art, amongst other material culture, is also fragmented. There are multi-faceted realms in which we come into contact with things, this is specifically true of our experience of objects through the internet, social media and websites. The image becomes as important, if not more important, than the physical work itself. The control of setting, lighting, editing and formatting allows us to influence other people’s perceptions of the physical object. There is to an extent a lack of choice made in viewing through digital means; our experiences may be diluted, homogenized and even predetermined by prior searches and algorithms, further removing us from an individualised unique experience.

Instagram for example is widely used by the visual world to curate personal digital collections within its grid format of square images, shown in fig. 2. In addition, it is designed to fit a fast pace of living and viewing. Scrolling and flicking through digital imagery, one image after another, does not require a mindful interaction where time and care is a necessary part of the process of engagement. Through repeated digital interaction our attention itself can become thinner, fragmented and split between multiple options, crammed into moments that might have been for quiet contemplation, the digital world can fill the empty spaces that we avoid.

If we consider the fragment in a wider context, not just to describe a ceramic shard, but to be anything that is a small section of a larger whole; something that gives us a snippet of information and subsequently alludes to the whole, then, in these terms we can consider that the whole of the digital image, or even printed image, is already a fragment, as it is far removed from the original material object, lacking most qualities through which we may draw sensory perceptions of the artefact. We could further explain the pixilated image to be a kind of visual, digital fragment; each tiny, seemingly insignificant coloured square adding to a map-like grid of the whole image.

Grids are used to order, control, analyse and break down. They are also used within the context of an online catalogue or archive, to set out the format for a level playing field,

20 Internet Society, ‘Brief history of the internet’ https://www.internetsociety.org/internet/history-internet/brief-history-internet/ (accessed 6 July 2020).

a viewing system, which is supposedly neutral and without bias. The grid is a useful tool to the museum curator. The lack of hierarchy in a grid and satisfying employment of order, allow for the minimal alteration approach, similar to that of the conservator; nothing is hidden. Displayed for viewers of the objects to pick out their favourites from the vast collection.

Considering ideas of the grid, digital fragment and flat interaction I move on to explore the realm of the virtual artefact through the Victoria and Albert website collections. The V&A catalogue comprises images of objects, depicted in isolation on a neutral background, divorced of context; other than that, official documented and approved by the archaeologist, curator, museum archive and historians whose professional contact with it placed it for others to view.

It is not easy to settle on one object of focus.

The process of scrolling through pages on my computer does not provide the shared intimacy that is experienced in the china galleries at the top of the Victoria and Albert Museum building, where an object can draw you in like a magnet. Scrolling through the V&A catalogue it seems that it is the complete objects to which most attention is given. So initially, I narrow my search looking specifically for ceramic blue and white fragments, curious to see how objects similar to those that I found on the foreshore are catalogued. It seems little is known about the artefacts that come up on the website, or is it, perhaps because they are considered to be less valuable than the complete objects or simply because they lack information in their fragmented form?

search: Ceramics blue and white fragments, 2020 Fig. 4 screen shot, V&A ceramics collection

I decide not to choose one individual artefact from the online collection but rather to observe the use of digital search engines as a form of collection. Fragments of fragments.

I consider what digital materiality might be… through advancement in digital communication certain digital modes of carrying information have become outdated and discarded, for example the Floppy Disc, CD Rom and even USB. This material ephemera left behind that is now useless in function but is still a symbol of date time and place a physical digital fragment that now occupies our shared environment but ceases to serve an active function. Similarly to the broken shards of utilitarian ceramic objects this digital material is evidence of past practice. However, ceramic objects in their complete form are still widely used in the same ways as they have been for thousands of years, whereas digital objects become redundant much quicker, replaced by upgrades of smaller, faster, more effective versions multiple times a year. In hundreds or even thousands of years to come we may come across the physical detritus of the prior digital age, such as the plastic remains of a disc or USB and have little understanding of what they were for or how they might be relevant. However, the ceramic object has already survived the test of time, so to speak; the oldest piece of ceramic is over 20,000 years old, furthermore, the vessels used for storing and eating food hundreds of years ago comparatively have changed very little to new versions produced today.