terça-feira, 8 de janeiro de 2013

The World of the Spoon

"any thing has it’s being—ongoing sense or meaning—in the referential whole that it refers to, and that equally already refers to it—its world(ing)."
M. Heidegger

 You need to buy a spoon. But what for? Why? Is it valuable for you? Is it necessary? What it is made of? You have to choose, which to buy. You see that there are more than one material of that object you need. So, you start: will I use for eating or will I use to begin a collection of my own? But wait, it doesn't say if I can put it on the heat. Neither if it is made from a fragile material. So, you start looking to it, appreciating it if it's beautiful, or disliking it if it makes you bad. But, what does it have that makes you think of it this way? Which knowledge you have to say it's well done or not? Then you conclude that it's not so easy to buy a spoon, as you thought would be.
In our modern world, when you see a object, a thing, like a spoon, one might wonder about it's shape, is it good for it's purpose? It feels good to use it? Or maybe to it's cost, together with the material, it is well made, made from silver, so then really expensive, but one can really like it, it's shiny and have all that beautiful art in it, buy it to make a collection, or a decoration. So one uses it's aesthetics features to choose an object, just for it's appearance, from this person's knowledge of what is beautiful or not, that can change for one another. However, this type of objects, that are most often used, nowadays have been made from diverse materials, that are cheap in the markets, like plastic. If a plastic spoon is broken it can be easily dumped, and how Heidegger would say, it would be 'de-worlded', and would be a disposable thing. No one would use then a plastic spoon to decorate it. That brings the text to the other point, the morality of a spoon.
No one would buy something that really seems bad made, dirty. It works when you have to sell a spoon. A moral thinking of good activity for the people says the spoon must be clean to be sold, must be written somewhere of what it's made of. People have the moral right to make good use of your spoon. It has to be representative of it's use, for food or for decoration or even for medical dosages. It has to be a desire for the human, as well as be a good product, which means that it has to have good quality. It's just a right conduct to be followed, by ethics of human, and as one says : things do us human, i.e., it means a thing is significant because it worlds. For Heidegger the worlding of the world is the ongoing and dynamic referential whole in which things always already have their meaning, as such. So, a spoon, to be a spoon can refer to eating, as to cooking, as to decorating. Thus, world(ing) is the "ongoing unfolding of references, an immensely dense referential whole, that constitute the transcendental possibility for some thing to continue to ‘be’ what it already is, and simultaneously draws on that very being for its ‘worldness’".
All in all, when one has to choose a spoon, one does not simply get the first spoon he sees, he reflects about it, ethically, morally, aesthetically. Everything matters, things are the ones that make us who we are, make us think, memorize, use, decorate, make art, different from all other species.

sábado, 5 de janeiro de 2013

Concept Map


Anatomy of a Spoon


A - Bowl tip
B - Bowl
C - Drop
D - Shoulders
E - Stem
F - Handle
G - Terminal (tip)

reference

Abecedario - ABC

A - alluminium - Apostle Spoons - ambry - anoiting of the English sovereign
B - bowl - bronze - breakfast
C - cook - cupboard - cutlery - ceramic - copper
D - diamond - dosage - dinner
E - eat - event - ear spoon
F - food - flint
G - gold
H - handle - horn
I - ivory - inventory
J - jam
K - king 
L - liquid - lunch
M - measure - medicine - museum
N - noodle - niquel
O - oval form
P - Peuter - present - plastic
Q - queen
R - rarity - royal - religious
S - soup - silver - stem - shells (used by primitives) - symbol - sideboard
T - tea - table
U - units
V - value - volume
W - wood
X - xarope
Y - yogurt

Spoon Woman (Femme cuillère), 1926



ALBERTO GIACOMETTI
Swiss, 1901-1966
Giacometti moved from his native Switzerland to Paris in 1922 to pursue his art studies and quickly came under the influence of various avant-garde movements. Spoon Woman, the largest and most totemic of his early sculptures, clearly displays these new interests. The figure's blocky head, chest, and feet reflect the geometry of Cubism. The large concave abdomen seems to derive from African spoon figures. And the theme of fertility and sexuality, expressed primarily by the concave, womb-like midsection, owes much to Surrealist iconography. The figure became popularly known as "Spoon Woman" from the time of its first exhibition in 1927, but Giacometti always preferred the more general title of Femme grande (Large Woman).

reference

Ode to the Spoon

Spoon,
scoop 
formed 
by man's 
most ancient hand, 
in your design 
of metal or of wood 
we still see 
the shape 
of the first 
palm 
to which 
water 
imparted 
coolness 
and savage 
blood, 
the throb 
of bonfires and the hunt. 
Little 
spoon 
in an 
infant's 
tiny hand,
you raise 
to his mouth 
the earth's 
most 
ancient 
kiss, 
silent heritage 
of the first water to sing 
on lips that later lay 
buried beneath the sand. 


Ode to the Spoon - Pablo Neruda (1957)

With few words, Neruda describes the genesis, design and usage of this small utensil.

reference