New Eyes for Dead Things
This project, ‘New Eyes for Dead Things’, explores the apparent dislocation and loss of meaning to mass produced goods as a result of a growing consumer society over the 20th and 21st centuries. Using observation, collection, and making with discarded materials, it reclaims creative agency within consumer culture’s confines. The process produces ‘purposeless’ assemblages, which have been 3D scanned using LiDAR.
Through a developed process, the project considers the impact of distance between the consumer and the location of design and manufacture, the point of fracture in meaning that might occur at a particular distance, and a speculated future in which the design and manufacturing of our goods might require no human intervention at all.
The work critiques the decay in meaning of systems and structures, reframing discarded objects and spaces as sites rich in meaning through intuitive making. It seeks provocation and reflection on consumerism, material culture, and convenience.