Object obsolescence.
"Tell me who's to blame for the ink spot, question mark."
I get attached to things. This should not surprise you.
I stole a pen once from a Bank of America location in passive-aggressive retaliation of the absurd Balkanization of their computer systems ("What do you mean 'what state did I open the account in'? I opened it online!"). That pen, as it turns out, was a dream. I carried it with me everywhere, filling in crosswords and signing autographs. It was - dare I say it - the perfect pen.
All things must come and go and by the end of the summer, the ink well had all but dried up. In desperation, I pieced together the scrapped off logo and searched for the model online. Lo and behold, the pen was readily available, and cheaply, at any office supply chain. Naturally, I bought pens in the double digits to horde.
Yet, somehow, in such a great magnitude, the pen(s) lost their luster. Where once I lovingly held on to one, now I recklessly lost multitudes without a second thought. I pondered this as I perused the Musée de Cluny collection of Medieval artifacts -- wooden utensils passed on from generation to generation. Had the Age of Mechanical Reproduction destroyed our basic relationship with the singularity of objects?
Allow me one more example.
I own a t-shirt. There is nothing particularly special about it. It is a plain old white t-shirt, with a Middletown 350-year anniversary logo in the center. I bought it over five years ago at a pleasant time in my life. It has cheerful memories associated with it and, most importantly, I felt good wearing it.
While I have only grown more handsome (and drop-dead gorgeous) with age, my shirt, in contrast, has become dingy and tattered as shirts are wont to do. Unfortunate stains invaded the arm-pits. Random ink blots blemished its once prestine exterior. Like old-weathered paper, it started to yellow. It had gone from a treasure to an article of clothing girlfriends were embarrassed to be seen with.
I was sorting through my old clothing the other day, when I stumbled upon my Middletown t-shirt. I bemoaned its tragic unwearableness. Nothing could be done.
Or was there?
After some brainstorming and hypothesizing, I pulled out my digital camera, took a snapshot of the shirt, brushed up the logo on Photoshop, and then submitted that image to CafePress (a sort of do-it-yourself merchandise retailer). A couple of weeks later, I received a perfect replica of my old t-shirt in immaculate condition -- just like the day I bought it.
In fact, this new process has opened up the possibility of recreating the shirt endlessly. Suddenly, the shirt has somehow become emotionally devalued; that its new infiniteness has made it, well, less special.
Has the Age of Digital Reproduction destroyed our basic relationship with the situatedness of objects?
I get attached to things. This should not surprise you.
I stole a pen once from a Bank of America location in passive-aggressive retaliation of the absurd Balkanization of their computer systems ("What do you mean 'what state did I open the account in'? I opened it online!"). That pen, as it turns out, was a dream. I carried it with me everywhere, filling in crosswords and signing autographs. It was - dare I say it - the perfect pen.
All things must come and go and by the end of the summer, the ink well had all but dried up. In desperation, I pieced together the scrapped off logo and searched for the model online. Lo and behold, the pen was readily available, and cheaply, at any office supply chain. Naturally, I bought pens in the double digits to horde.
Yet, somehow, in such a great magnitude, the pen(s) lost their luster. Where once I lovingly held on to one, now I recklessly lost multitudes without a second thought. I pondered this as I perused the Musée de Cluny collection of Medieval artifacts -- wooden utensils passed on from generation to generation. Had the Age of Mechanical Reproduction destroyed our basic relationship with the singularity of objects?
Allow me one more example.
I own a t-shirt. There is nothing particularly special about it. It is a plain old white t-shirt, with a Middletown 350-year anniversary logo in the center. I bought it over five years ago at a pleasant time in my life. It has cheerful memories associated with it and, most importantly, I felt good wearing it.
While I have only grown more handsome (and drop-dead gorgeous) with age, my shirt, in contrast, has become dingy and tattered as shirts are wont to do. Unfortunate stains invaded the arm-pits. Random ink blots blemished its once prestine exterior. Like old-weathered paper, it started to yellow. It had gone from a treasure to an article of clothing girlfriends were embarrassed to be seen with.
I was sorting through my old clothing the other day, when I stumbled upon my Middletown t-shirt. I bemoaned its tragic unwearableness. Nothing could be done.
Or was there?
After some brainstorming and hypothesizing, I pulled out my digital camera, took a snapshot of the shirt, brushed up the logo on Photoshop, and then submitted that image to CafePress (a sort of do-it-yourself merchandise retailer). A couple of weeks later, I received a perfect replica of my old t-shirt in immaculate condition -- just like the day I bought it.
In fact, this new process has opened up the possibility of recreating the shirt endlessly. Suddenly, the shirt has somehow become emotionally devalued; that its new infiniteness has made it, well, less special.
Has the Age of Digital Reproduction destroyed our basic relationship with the situatedness of objects?
posted by d l wright at 10/23/2006 10:52:00 PM
6 Comments:
Sick Logan Wright, downright Sick. I organized all of my playlists again today in preparation for my imminent latin american adventure. I cam across so many of your 80's mp3s in my folder that I had to make an 80's playlist. Now, whenever I listen to it I will think of you. Music, another infinitely repeatable memory?
-zil blogs.bootsnall.com/zil
still, that shit is brilliant! they should market themselves as being able to do that, me thinks.
i thought i was the only one who liked that Self album!!
Fetishist...
(Overall I completely disagree with your assertion about the situatedness of objects. Not to mention that you totally ignored the issue of digital distribution.
Does a classic game – say the original Zelda – have any extra value in cartridge form when you can buy it for five dollars and instantly download and play it on your Wii?
Does a classic Hitchcock film like Rear Window have any less appeal when you watch it “On Demand” instead watching your super Special Edition anniversary, extra content, DVD with extras?
Or what about that Smashing Pumpkins album you have found memories of. Does buying it through the iTunes stores and having no physical objects devalue the albums memory?
In these, and many other, cases: not so much. Not for me, at least.
Although historically objects, res, have been the source of memory for most of us, I don’t believe it has to be that way.
Great orators... the likes of which hardly exist today... used to use a memory aid technique where they assigned stories, digression, arguments, introductions (etc.) to faces in the crowd or locations in the field of visions. That way they simply had to remember where to look to access the knowledge, the emotion, the argument they needed.
Perhaps we don’t train ourselves to use this technique, but to some degree we all naturally do so. The challenge then is to teach ourselves to be able to reach those fond memories through the simulacra that forms our culture.
Perhaps objects no longer are, or can be, unique. But we still have the freedom to attach meaning... and ultimately the meaning should be the focus –– not the object.)
Ben: I think they aren't marketing that ability because it is hard to pull off, and because there are probably copyright or patent issues involved with copying t-shirts. I just figured that Middletown wouldn't care. And I believe you introduced me to that Self album -- it is still pretty solid (I especially love Borateen).
Mark: You misinterpret me. This is not about the way we use objects to salvage memory, but they ways in which scarcity and memory influence the way we value objects. And all of your examples of digital distrubtion are mediated through some other physical object (you can't play a game, watch a movie, or listen to a CD on their own), which complicates the relation.
Regardless, your examples don't devalue my point, but only confirm it.
I don't know that I am misinterpreting you so much as it may be that I wasn't clear.
I think my point is that we always attach memory/nostalgia/value to objects and scarcity has nothing to do with it. Regardless of whether an object is scare/common, tangible/intangible the value is attached through a process that
is based on us... not on the object.
In other words attaching value to the object creates a feeling of scarcity and irreplaceability regardless of whether it is or isn't.
And I don't think mediation has any affect. The meaning of objects are always mediated through us (how we mediate and how we learn to mediate is a process that is far more complicated than I'm going to go into here).
If I understand you correctly, it seems like the mediation you speak of would effect the use value. But I'm pretty sure your point was that the shirt and the pen have the same use value as equivalent objects that don't have the emotional resonance.
Ergo... what was I talking about again?
This totally could have been a Borges story -- all he ever did was take something and make it infinite, and then all of the literary critics applauded.
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