Objects as Memory Artifacts
Baudrillard (1996) discuses the capacity for objects to invoke memories within us, that they complexity of this relationship between human on object connoting the ‘emotional value’ objects take on; ‘What gives houses of our childhood such depth and resonance in memory is clearly the complex structure of interiority, and the objects within it serve for us as boundary markers of the symbolic configuration known as home. In their anthropomorphism the objects that furnish it become household gods, spatial incarnations of the emotional bonds and the permanence of the family group’. He terms these objects technemes, items which consider not only their technical function but also the ideas, values, and fetishes connected to them, and describes them as being in a ‘perpetual flight from technical structure towards their secondary meanings, from technological system towards a cultural system’.
Baudrillard (1996) romanticised that ‘We may dream of arriving at an exhaustive description of technemes and their semantic relations that would cover the entire world of objects, but this inevitably remain just that – a dream.’ However with the advent near-field communications, and a global database of things, it’s possible for us to create an interface that maps his view of objects and our memories.
Baudrillard, Jean (1996) The System of Objects (translated by Benedict, James), Verso London
No comments yet.