Mining the Object or Mining Your Mind
Yesterday afternoon, I took my younger daughter to Knott’s Berry Farm.
It’s a 15-20 min drive from our house. We made it in 17 minutes yesterday!
We walked through the gates at 4:05pm and did a blitz of rides and snacks in 2 hours! btw, we have annual passes - so we do this often.
It’s great. Highly recommend! Knott’s is chill.
But here’s why I am starting with Knott’s - it’s because of the Calico Mine train ride.
My daughter asked, “Dad, where does this train go, in a mind?”
I reply sincerely, “Yes honey, in an old mine.”
“Like an old man’s brain?”
“Wait, what?’
She says in a frustrated tone - “Dad. His brain, his mind?” [pointing to her head].
“Ohhhhhhhhh! Oh this ride is going into a “mine” not a “mind.”
Lol. It was a great parenting moment.
We then went on a to have a conversation about what a mine is, the history, etc…
But then we were also able to circle back and imagine what it would be like to train through your brain!
Brain Train!
The thought I want to connect this brain train to is connected to the post yesterday about meaningful objects.
I was reading this morning in God, Human, Animal, Machine, by Meghan O’Gieblyn, looking for a reference for another quote - and stumbled upon some Object Oriented Ontology related content.
One of the main tenets of OOO is to not over or undermine objects.
“Mining” is a very popular term in contemporary art - I heard it a lot in graduate school.
A sentence like, “the idea that ________ …. there is just something to mine there….”
I dislike these statements, as they use too many words.
Can it be okay to say “I am having a thought, and I’m going to think about it for a while.”???
We go out of our way to tell other people essentially: I am thinking about it.
I am going to continue thinking thoughts for a little while.
My thought this morning, tied to yesterday’s post, is how we go mining for meaning.
I have a difficult time with Art that anthropomorphizes objects. I mean professional art.
Because anthropomorphizing anything is hardwired to our biology.
In God Human Animal Machine, O’Gieblyn sites work from Anthropologist, Steward Guthrie, that “our tendency to anthropomorphize is an evolutionary strategy. All perceptual guesses come with payoffs in terms of survival.”
Essentially, it is in our interest, on a biological level, to perceive things this way.
“All of us have inherited this perceptual schema, and our tendency to overimbue objects with personhood is it’s unfortunate side effect. We are constantly, obsessively, enchanting the world with life it does not possess.”
In the world of sculpture - there is a tendency to take random things and put them together to make a figure. Often times, artists will take random things and make a human face - the shapes of which puzzle together to look like exactly what our brains learned to decode when we were infants.
Our facial expressions our the foundation of our communication to each other.
If you can’t speak the language you point to stuff and make a happy or sad face to the person you are talking to.
Basic biological stuff.
We see faces and forms in everything because when we were in little bodies we had to be able to decode very quickly which large bodies were safe or not.
Back to art, and objects, and meaning.
In mining my own mind in regards to meaning - I think the place I get hung up is the space betweenn information and meaning.
The reason I get hung up there is because that IS the realm of the artist. I take information and arrange it in different ways to create meaning for others.
My frustration in life, in general, is simply that I just linger longer in that space between, and then I play with it. I dance with it. I surf it.
When we use words to describe objects, I like to linger in that space too. Like a switchboard operator.
Let’s try this word. Let’s plug it into this connection here.
For example. It can be said that the difference between “patina” and “corrosion” is not about information, it is about meaning.
Information stated neutrally is like a dictionary definition. Both patina, scale, corrosion, crust, etc, are terms that convey similar information. However, depending onn how they are framed in a sentence, can take on different meaning.
TO TIE IT ALL TOGETHER.
What is intersting to me, is how and when people choose to use certain words over others to describe physical things. Because the rad thing about a physical thing is that is right there/here/now.
We are both observing it.
We are both perceiving it in our own ways.
But rather than connecting with our own deep personal connection, and articulating it, we throw in a conversational shorthand like “I love the patina on this thing,” as if that is the connective tissue that makes a thing interesting.
And maybe it is interesting. But we don’t know yet because we have to go mine that thought…
The next thought on that brain train should be - why do you love the patina on that thing?
Is patina important to you?
Why is patina important to you?
The person might say - patina infers wear, and use over time. This thing is old, this thing has lived a life.
Are those ideas important to you?
Why are those ideas important to you?
Where did those ideas come from?
___
We can continue on that thought and find out where that thought wants to go, what it reveals to ourself about ourself.
But that interesting thing is, you can do this with any object, because the power to do this is already within us.
We do it all the time.
And when we connect with what is within, and articulate that to the group - then we can connect with each other.
The conversation is what gives form to what is important to us.
Objects are always standing by.
Peace, love, cactus.
E