The Secret Meaning of Things Lecture 2 Material

The Secret Meaning of Things Lecture 2: Material Culture and The Everyday

Material Culture The Study of “Things” Artifacts are ‘tools’ but also as signals, signs and symbols Their use and functions are multiple and intertwined; their meaning is often subliminal and unconscious

The Meaning of Things Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi The things people use, own, and surround themselves with might accurately reflect their personality. Not surprisingly, the clothes one wears, the car one drives and the furnishings of one’s home, all are expressions of one’s self, even when they act as disguises rather than as reflections.

The Meaning of Things Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi … the things that surround us are inseparable from who we are … … objects are intimately related to the self …

The Meaning of Things Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi … the material environment that surrounds us is rarely neutral….

The Meaning of Things Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi … the material environment that surrounds us is rarely neutral … it either helps the forces of chaos that make life random and disorganised or it helps to give purpose and direction to one’s life.

Toothpicks and Logos John Heskett Utility and Significance in Everyday Objects

Toothpicks and Logos John Heskett Utility and Significance in Everyday Objects

Toothpicks and Logos John Heskett Utility and Significance in Everyday Objects

Toothpicks and Logos John Heskett Even the smallest utilitarian objects are capable of embodying values

Q: When is a sheep not a sheep? A: When it’s a work of art. Damien Hirst, Away from the Flock, 1994

Roland Barthes (1915 -1980) Mythologies 1957 (1993) Semiotics Objects as ‘signs’

Roland Barthes Mythologies 1957 (1993) Citroën DS (Déesse) - 1955 … cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the Gothic cathedrals … the supreme creation of an era. .

Roland Barthes Mythologies 1957 (1993) Semiotics - the study of ‘signs’ Signifier: its physical form (ie: a diamond ring) Signified: the mental concept it refers to (ie: engagement)

Roland Barthes Mythologies 1957 (1993) A photograph will be a kind of speech for us in the same way as a newspaper article; even objects will become speech

Jeans = signfier Beauty = signified

What are increasingly produced are not material objects, but signs Roland Barthes Perfume = signfier Physical Allure = signified

Richard Hamilton Just What is it that Makes Today’s Homes so Interesting, so Appealing? 1956

The Chapman Family Collection Jake and Dinos Chapman 2002

Neil Cummings The Collection Yellow 1998

Tony Cragg (1949 -) We have such a bad physical relationship to the objects and material we produce that it is almost embarrassing to consider the metaphysical, the poetical, the mythological. Staubsauger - 1981

Rainer Spehl Every object in the world can pass from a closed silent existence to an oral state Roland Barthes Qoffee stool 2000

Material Culture And The Everyday Material Culture The Study of ‘Things’ (artifacts of Everyday life) Mihaly Csiksentmihalyi The ‘things’ that surround us are inseparable from who we are (‘things’ are never neutral)

Material Culture And The Everyday John Heskett Utility and Significance of Everyday things Roland Barthes Everyday objects are not just ‘things’ but a complex system of signs which allow us to read meaning into people and places