Some-Thing
Plaster cast artefact An object designed to be nothing (with no primary use) but looks like it’s made for something.
The outcome of a weeklong project surrounding the potential of design as research. I began reading into phenomenology, a philosophy surrounding subjective human experience, which led to researching various technology philosophies.
I wanted to explore this idea of how objects are usually made with a specific intention, and yet we still use them in other ways, finding new and creative purposes for different situations, e.g. using a chair as a doorstop.
I decided to take the idea of objects having a main purpose, which other uses deviate from, and flip it to create an object that has no main use; its purpose wholly depends on how the user chooses to use it.
It’s intended to evoke a sort of primitive sense of curiosity, as if it's just been found in an archaeological dig. The viewer is aware it's a 'thing', they're just not sure what.
When displayed, viewers were invited to think about what purpose they would assign to it, and why. The object has the potential to act as an insight into affordance, how the characteristics of technologies influence the way we interact with them.