Everyday objects in the digital era: biographies, transformations and meanings — Introduction
“A selfless appreciation of the realm of things will bring the world around you to life in a way that you can’t even begin to comprehend with the mind.”
Eckhart Tolle (“Silence Speaks” 2003)
Abstract
This article proposes to analyze the effects that photogrammetry and the subsequent digital transformation into artistic pieces have on the social life of a personal collection of seven objects. What values and meanings do the objects acquire when they are digitized? Do they maintain the network of social relations that they had in their physical state? In what other relations are they inscribed in their digital being? The methodology used starts with the reconstruction of “biographies” through interviews with their owners, then each of the objects are digitized through photogrammetry and later used as a basis for creating artistic pieces that represent these stories that embody the objects. At the end of this research it was found the way in which 3D digitization allows to see the objects under another perspective, allowing an appreciation that their physical state does not allow, also the way in which the artistic transformation based on the stories contained in the object allow to extend its social life even when the object is in a digital state. Personally, this work allowed me to explore this technique as well as the different personal histories of my family and the way they have been preserved through these objects, or in some cases, constructed thanks to this exploration.
Keywords: social life of objects, photogrammetry, digitization, materiality.
Introduction
Anthropology has paid increasing attention to the social life of things, understanding that objects do not have an intrinsic value, but acquire their value through the social relations that are established around and through them. On the other hand, the way in which the meanings embodied by objects are so deeply rooted that they emanate affect without the need to depend on interpersonal ties is studied.
Hoskins(2005) explains how the boundary between people and things is culturally and socially variable, depending on the context people adopt attributes of things and vice versa. This theoretical line can be traced back to the work of Marcel Mauss, “Essay on the gift” (2009), this work focuses on the concept of the “gift” which is a form of exchange that goes beyond the commercial exchange and implies a social and symbolic relationship between individuals, it is from this exchange that social relationships and solidarity ties are created and maintained, but that implies obligations since the recipient of the gift is obliged to return the gesture in the future and this in turn creates a cycle of continuous exchange. Based on these transitions that objects undergo throughout their lives, one can speak of their “biographies”: when they go from gift to possession, from possession to objects with significant emotional value, and finally to forgotten objects. This cycle of their lives serves as a parallel to their birth, life and subsequent death.
With the arrival of the 21st century and the proliferation of new technologies for communication, the field of material culture studies has adapted by analyzing the effects of digital transformation on the social life of objects, exploring how it affects the way objects are produced, circulated, consumed, and valued in different contexts, as well as studying how the social practices and relationships surrounding objects have changed, including the “coming back to life” of previously forgotten objects and the effects on communities related to them.
Among the authors who have written on the subject, Heidi Geismar (2018), explores digitization and how museums have adapted to this new technology and how it has allowed collections to be displayed in a more accessible way by allowing the public to explore objects in more detail and with greater interactivity, likewise creating new opportunities for object research and analysis. Despite these benefits, the author raises the challenges that this new technology has brought with it, such as concerns around intellectual property, ethical use of distribution and above all the paradigm shift that should be carried out with this technology, as it should not be seen as a solution for the lack of access to physical objects, but Geismar (2018), comments that it should be seen as a complement that can enrich the public’s experience and improve their understanding by being an extension of the physical object.
On the other hand, there is the revaluation of digital objects and their cultural capital and how this is transforming the consumption practices of objects in contemporary society. An example of this could be the popularization of NFTs or non-fungible tokens, digital images created by users or companies to which a monetary value is added, popularized during 2021 and their subsequent fall in popularity along with the cryptocurrency market during 2022. As DeVon (2022) explains, this largely occurs due to their volatility and high speculativeness associated with the ambivalence of the value these digital objects possess.
Due to this virtual transformation, several questions arise: when an object is digitized, does it still maintain the network of social relations it has in its physical state? Does it acquire other values and meanings in its digital version? Are they still capable of having agency even when they are digitized? Does this agency become more volatile because of this transformation? The present research seeks to explore these questions through a case study of a private collection of seven objects belonging to my family in Cali, Colombia. This in order to explore the trajectories and personal histories that the owners have with these objects, since as the author Arjun Appadurai mentions: “It is only through the analysis of trajectories that we can interpret the human transactions and calculations that animate things” (Appadurai, 1988, p. 19).
The objective in studying this small collection of objects is to analyze their social life, their “biographies”, to see how they serve as small windows that show a where and a when that has already passed, and even some people who are no longer with us, either because they have died or we have lost contact, or because they correspond to particular moments of being in the lives of our relatives. Reconstructing the trajectories of these objects also allows us to explore the network of interpersonal relationships that constitute these objects, as well as the network that is born from them and connects individuals, places and events. To this end, I conducted interviews with the owners of each object and, in those cases in which the owners were no longer there, these stories were constructed from the memories of their relatives. Based on the “biographies” of the physical objects, the next step in the research was to find a way in which all these stories could be staged; this was done by digitizing them and then creating digital reconstructions. This staging was done with the objective of analyzing the way in which digital transformations could transfigure the social life of the collection of objects in my home.
Structure of the Investigation:
- Chapter 1: Case studies
Case studies| 2. Non-rooted root
“Culture has been commodified, but art still has meaning.”
medium.com
- Chapter 2: Transformations
- Conclusions
