My Mother, my Cousin, my niece, my Internet of Things
Objects that are defined as “art” can be experienced through diverse fluid networks: when institutionalized, they are read through sociocultural, historical, anthropological, epistemological or other ontological networks, they are valued through the art market and they are categorized within the various art systems. When personal, they are objects/things that matter to one or many; object/things once functional, yet now stripped out of function. Through a collection, the personal items exist in a dissolved syn-chronic status that is based on the beholder’s share.
An amalgam of objects-things formatted and labeled under certain conditions and rules is classified as a/ the collection. Potentially, all objects can be collected; a piece from nature, shells, stones, air, a piece of furniture, an artwork, two precious lamps, an old refrigerator, a funky dress, several generations of cell phones, mirrors, quilts, weather vanes, bronze bells, stamps, wooden boxes, silver plated trays, wall clocks, candlesticks. They act as reminders of a past without having a say on the future; they become the material recollections and the celebrated relics of the present. The collectibles function as beauty-pageant contestants, carefully chosen, embellished and placed in an environment in order to be looked at and admired.
Just what makes an item a collectible has to do with the need for its preservation and its passage from its past functional status to a new curated era of display and contemplation. From the cabinet of curiosities of the 1500’s to the virtual meta-museum of our era the need of collecting and displaying seems rooted in human affectation.
The search for the curio, a rare unusual, or intriguing object, is a prerequisite for the establishment of the cultural vanity that we experience.
My mother kept her black fur coat in her closet for decades. This fur coat is connected with the wedding of my cousin in the United States, with the funeral of my grandmother in Thessaloniki, with the big opening that my cousins held in Athens when they opened their new business. In her mind, this coat is a precious and symbolic item, that is immediately connected with her status and her presentation. My mother is comfortable in this fur coat, as she stabilizes her identity in formal occasions; it is an armature that protects her from the world.
The fur coat casts a legacy to her heirs who do not really know what to do with it. Of course, it is not only the coat; it is also the shoes, the jewelry, the bags, lots of accessories, the dresses that were sewn for different occasions, the objects that stipulated a definition of who this woman is and how she carried herself in all aspects of her private and social life by using her carefully collected objects. These objects surround her and she is attached with them; she often takes them out of the closet and the boxes to admire them. My mother has asserted a value on her possessions that empowers her with the belief that they are precious to anyone as they are to her.
Things are abundant on the planet; they are the mirror image of the culture that produced them, they stand as the material manifestations of a mark value that has been placed by someone or many. They exist past their makers and, usually, they do not deteriorate as human bodies do. The difference in the narratives that surround objects is their inherent obsolescence. What is the span of life of a Mantegna painting versus the span of life of a Samsung Galaxy Core 3 cell phone? The product of technology or the product of industry in general, has a different set of traits than the unsurpassable span of life of a handcrafted work.
The abundance of data and their immateriality constitute a new reality beyond doubt. The shift towards an immaterial world has been done and each one of us find ourselves in an exponentially technological burst where things can be connected and controlled by a user, any user, me, you, my students, my mother, my cousin, my niece.
Technology is introduced in a number of appliances and infuses things with a special ability they didn’t have before. The Internet of Things (IoT) represents a tangible world with the power of infinite potentialities of interconnectivity. The idea behind the IoT is to introduce a social facilitator, that is an “entity” that foresees and provides for any human need imaginable. The presence of the human
factor as participator is preferred but not necessary.
My cousin in New York is connected through her smart phone with all aspects of her life while driving her car. The Internet of Things facilitates her multi-tasked life. She orders food while refueling, she speaks to her husband while returning a pile of clothes ordered through the internet to the store, she picks up her mother while talking to her son so that he expects her to be picked up for camp, she makes an appointment with the dermatologist while ordering the dry cleaner to deliver, she buys tickets for the opera while driving to the airport to catch a flight for a meeting, she turns on the Jacuzzi remotely, she consumes constantly and effortlessly, as she is situated in a system where money, services and things are connected. In this magically remote manner, a lifetime is orchestrated so that from the wake-up call in the morning until the sleeping time at night, every single second serves as a useful time component that connects complicated sets of actions in cascades of orders, tasks, arrangements and settings. My cousin is perfectly adjusted in the contemporary flow of time. My cousin experiences simultaneity, in which, every second is blended with the second that succeeds it, thus creating a solid bond between present and future and so the sense of future is annihilated. My cousin lives in a constant present, like all of us experiencing the blended space between physicality and the Internet.
The things that belong to an interconnected cloud are active participators in the life of the city and act as mediators between our present situations and potential knowledge for our futures; The IoT is an active member of our societies. For a “smart” item prefers its autonomy and functions on its own, even if it needs the human factor to showcase its abilities. A thing-in-network can never be obsolete as it can always be altered and remodified in order to serve the purposes of its user. My mother uses a WiFi-connected AC.
My niece cherishes her little blue elephant as her foremost belonging. She directs all of her attention to it for without it she will be lost and detached from her everyday life. She understands this thing as an instrument of her survival as the IoT surrounds her life and she is already experiencing the blended universe of materiality and virtuality. My niece’s day revolves around a feeding-playing-napping-feeding circle organized meticulously by an App that has been briefed with information from her parents from the day she was born. All data concerning her daily feeding doses, fecal circulation, temperature, crying circles, weight, and height are transformed into data charts that result in an efficient routine. The application notifies her mother of the time and the amount of food she has to give her and she is warned of any inconsistencies of her everydayness. My niece has regular Skype meetings with her grandmothers, the first occurring every day in the morning and the other usually by 6:00 in the evening. Her grandfather and great grandmother are occasionally joining the morning meetings. Most of the times she prefers to attend these meetings with her little blue elephant.
The text "My Mother, my Cousin, my Niece, my Internet of Things" written by Effie Halivopoulou, Dimitra Prifti, Aliki Ntounia, on the occasion of the exhibition “The Collection as Automaton” curated by Elpida Karamba and presented in the ACG Gallery, in February 2019.
Objects that are defined as “art” can be experienced through diverse fluid networks: when institutionalized, they are read through sociocultural, historical, anthropological, epistemological or other ontological networks, they are valued through the art market and they are categorized within the various art systems. When personal, they are objects/things that matter to one or many; object/things once functional, yet now stripped out of function. Through a collection, the personal items exist in a dissolved syn-chronic status that is based on the beholder’s share.
An amalgam of objects-things formatted and labeled under certain conditions and rules is classified as a/ the collection. Potentially, all objects can be collected; a piece from nature, shells, stones, air, a piece of furniture, an artwork, two precious lamps, an old refrigerator, a funky dress, several generations of cell phones, mirrors, quilts, weather vanes, bronze bells, stamps, wooden boxes, silver plated trays, wall clocks, candlesticks. They act as reminders of a past without having a say on the future; they become the material recollections and the celebrated relics of the present. The collectibles function as beauty-pageant contestants, carefully chosen, embellished and placed in an environment in order to be looked at and admired.
Just what makes an item a collectible has to do with the need for its preservation and its passage from its past functional status to a new curated era of display and contemplation. From the cabinet of curiosities of the 1500’s to the virtual meta-museum of our era the need of collecting and displaying seems rooted in human affectation.
The search for the curio, a rare unusual, or intriguing object, is a prerequisite for the establishment of the cultural vanity that we experience.
My mother kept her black fur coat in her closet for decades. This fur coat is connected with the wedding of my cousin in the United States, with the funeral of my grandmother in Thessaloniki, with the big opening that my cousins held in Athens when they opened their new business. In her mind, this coat is a precious and symbolic item, that is immediately connected with her status and her presentation. My mother is comfortable in this fur coat, as she stabilizes her identity in formal occasions; it is an armature that protects her from the world.
The fur coat casts a legacy to her heirs who do not really know what to do with it. Of course, it is not only the coat; it is also the shoes, the jewelry, the bags, lots of accessories, the dresses that were sewn for different occasions, the objects that stipulated a definition of who this woman is and how she carried herself in all aspects of her private and social life by using her carefully collected objects. These objects surround her and she is attached with them; she often takes them out of the closet and the boxes to admire them. My mother has asserted a value on her possessions that empowers her with the belief that they are precious to anyone as they are to her.
Things are abundant on the planet; they are the mirror image of the culture that produced them, they stand as the material manifestations of a mark value that has been placed by someone or many. They exist past their makers and, usually, they do not deteriorate as human bodies do. The difference in the narratives that surround objects is their inherent obsolescence. What is the span of life of a Mantegna painting versus the span of life of a Samsung Galaxy Core 3 cell phone? The product of technology or the product of industry in general, has a different set of traits than the unsurpassable span of life of a handcrafted work.
The abundance of data and their immateriality constitute a new reality beyond doubt. The shift towards an immaterial world has been done and each one of us find ourselves in an exponentially technological burst where things can be connected and controlled by a user, any user, me, you, my students, my mother, my cousin, my niece.
Technology is introduced in a number of appliances and infuses things with a special ability they didn’t have before. The Internet of Things (IoT) represents a tangible world with the power of infinite potentialities of interconnectivity. The idea behind the IoT is to introduce a social facilitator, that is an “entity” that foresees and provides for any human need imaginable. The presence of the human
factor as participator is preferred but not necessary.
My cousin in New York is connected through her smart phone with all aspects of her life while driving her car. The Internet of Things facilitates her multi-tasked life. She orders food while refueling, she speaks to her husband while returning a pile of clothes ordered through the internet to the store, she picks up her mother while talking to her son so that he expects her to be picked up for camp, she makes an appointment with the dermatologist while ordering the dry cleaner to deliver, she buys tickets for the opera while driving to the airport to catch a flight for a meeting, she turns on the Jacuzzi remotely, she consumes constantly and effortlessly, as she is situated in a system where money, services and things are connected. In this magically remote manner, a lifetime is orchestrated so that from the wake-up call in the morning until the sleeping time at night, every single second serves as a useful time component that connects complicated sets of actions in cascades of orders, tasks, arrangements and settings. My cousin is perfectly adjusted in the contemporary flow of time. My cousin experiences simultaneity, in which, every second is blended with the second that succeeds it, thus creating a solid bond between present and future and so the sense of future is annihilated. My cousin lives in a constant present, like all of us experiencing the blended space between physicality and the Internet.
The things that belong to an interconnected cloud are active participators in the life of the city and act as mediators between our present situations and potential knowledge for our futures; The IoT is an active member of our societies. For a “smart” item prefers its autonomy and functions on its own, even if it needs the human factor to showcase its abilities. A thing-in-network can never be obsolete as it can always be altered and remodified in order to serve the purposes of its user. My mother uses a WiFi-connected AC.
My niece cherishes her little blue elephant as her foremost belonging. She directs all of her attention to it for without it she will be lost and detached from her everyday life. She understands this thing as an instrument of her survival as the IoT surrounds her life and she is already experiencing the blended universe of materiality and virtuality. My niece’s day revolves around a feeding-playing-napping-feeding circle organized meticulously by an App that has been briefed with information from her parents from the day she was born. All data concerning her daily feeding doses, fecal circulation, temperature, crying circles, weight, and height are transformed into data charts that result in an efficient routine. The application notifies her mother of the time and the amount of food she has to give her and she is warned of any inconsistencies of her everydayness. My niece has regular Skype meetings with her grandmothers, the first occurring every day in the morning and the other usually by 6:00 in the evening. Her grandfather and great grandmother are occasionally joining the morning meetings. Most of the times she prefers to attend these meetings with her little blue elephant.
The text "My Mother, my Cousin, my Niece, my Internet of Things" written by Effie Halivopoulou, Dimitra Prifti, Aliki Ntounia, on the occasion of the exhibition “The Collection as Automaton” curated by Elpida Karamba and presented in the ACG Gallery, in February 2019.