CPS Week 5 - Object Oriented Ontology

In response to this week's theme of Object Oriented Ontology I produced a couple of illustrated works exploring objects and their existence seperate from human subjectivity.

Initially I was inspired by the concept of the Earth as a unified object. Borders and nations are a human construct, so I wanted to explore what a world without borders would look like. This idea is explored by Hideo Kojima in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and the greater Metal Gear series as a whole, as the conflict throughout the installments arises from different characters' attempts to unite the world as one through various means.

I struggled to conieve of a way to portray this in a short work I could produce within the space of one class. Instead I shifted to natural disasters and whether or not they are 'disasters' outside of human perception.

The work for this shows a large boulder that has rolled down a mountain and destroyed a city. However, to the animals nearby, it becomes a resting place or home. The boulder is just a boulder, a piece of nature. It just happened to roll through a city.

I was happy with this work, but wanted to explore something I felt was a little smaller in scale and more relevant to the topic. I produced a quick sketch of a lamp from my desk positioned upright in the rain, catching the water in its head and providing shelter for a small mouse. To humans a lamp has one singular purpose. To this mouse the lamp is something entirely different.

Similar works have been produced by Pixar Studios, specifically the films Toy Story and Ratatouille, which portray non-human characters using manmade objects for uses other than those that were intended.