TOOLS FOR READING

TOOLS FOR READING

Embodied Object

The Embodied Object describes the imagined voice of my chosen objects. These objects do not share the physical signifiers of human facial features for example; that would more readily be associated with an object that has an imagined voice. Instead my embodied object is a voice that takes on an essence of lived experience through wear and the material properties of ceramic. It is informed by my own knowledge of this material and it’s history, which is descriptively relayed to the reader within the poems and musings on the object.

Blue-print Altered Image

Term used to describe the illustrations of this text. Selected illustrations are a photographic representation of physical and digital imagery/artefacts/sources in blue monotone. They act as a sort of diagram to the objects described in the writing, allowing the viewer to see the image with an impression of the source, without fully relying on it for all information and therefore giving the opportunity for the writing to fill in the gaps in understanding.

Digital Fragment

Digital fragments – an idea used to describe the mathematical order of a grid that we as humans impose on things, in this case specifically digital - pixilated imagery, which is built up of a grid of coloured squares, experienced through light. Each small section a piece of information building up a larger whole. I invite you to consider that this is a digital fragment.

Furthermore, when considering the digital fragment there is also the material left behind from outdated digital objects such floppy disc or CD. However, within the context of this piece of writing I am specifically interested in the idea of the digital image of the ceramic object as a digital fragment.

Artefact Souvenir

I use this to describe the found material culture of a certain site. The location where an object is found is relevant to the person who finds it, it brings them back to an attached time and place, where the object was found – triggering memory and sensory engagement. This type of object cannot be bought in a shop and may have no monetary value.

Throughout this text I refer to ceramic examples of the artefact as souvenir or ‘Artefact Souvenir’.

Ideas surrounding the souvenir are informed by Susan Stewart’s text On Longing; ‘The souvenir may be seen as emblematic of the nostalgia that all narrative reveals – the longing for its place of origin.’2

Flat Interaction

This is the exploration and search of and for information without physical engagement with objects. Limited only to computer or phone key-pad, screen and touch screen. The term Flat Interaction could be seen as similar to or drawing parallels with the way we experience digital interaction, however it specifically refers to the lack of real material objects.

2 Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. (Baltimore, USA: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984.) P. Preface Xii