1. Lecture 2: Material Culture and The Everyday The Secret Meaning of Things

2. Material Culture The Study of Things Artifacts are tools but also as signals, signs and symbols Their use and functions are multiple and intertwined; their meaning is often subliminal and unconscious

3. The Meaning of Things Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi The things people use, own, and surround themselves with might accurately reflect their personality. Not surprisingly, the clothes one wears, the car one drives and the furnishings of ones home, all are expressions of ones self, even when they act as disguises rather than as reflections.

4. The Meaning of Things Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi … the things that surround us are inseparable from who we are … … objects are intimately related to the self …

5. The Meaning of Things Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi … the material environment that surrounds us is rarely neutral….

6. The Meaning of Things Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi … the material environment that surrounds us is rarely neutral … it either helps the forces of chaos that make life random and disorganised or it helps to give purpose and direction to ones life.

7. Toothpicks and Logos John Heskett Utility and Significance in Everyday Objects

8. Toothpicks and Logos John Heskett Utility and Significance in Everyday Objects

9. Toothpicks and Logos John Heskett Utility and Significance in Everyday Objects

10. Toothpicks and Logos John Heskett Even the smallest utilitarian objects are capable of embodying values

11. Q: When is a sheep not a sheep? A: When its a work of art. Damien Hirst, Away from the Flock, 1994

12. Roland Barthes (1915-1980) Mythologies 1957 (1993) Semiotics Objects as signs

13. Roland Barthes Mythologies 1957 (1993) Citroën DS (Déesse) - 1955 … cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the Gothic cathedrals … the supreme creation of an era..

14. Roland Barthes Mythologies 1957 (1993) Semiotics - the study of signs Signifier: its physical form (ie: a diamond ring) Signified: the mental concept it refers to (ie: engagement)

15. Roland Barthes Mythologies 1957 (1993) A photograph will be a kind of speech for us in the same way as a newspaper article; even objects will become speech

16. Jeans = signfier Beauty = signified

17. What are increasingly produced are not material objects, but signs Roland Barthes Perfume = signfier Physical Allure = signified

18. Richard Hamilton Just What is it that Makes Todays Homes so Interesting, so Appealing? 1956

19. The Chapman Family Collection Jake and Dinos Chapman 2002

20. Neil Cummings The Collection Yellow 1998

21. Tony Cragg (1949-) We have such a bad physical relationship to the objects and material we produce that it is almost embarrassing to consider the metaphysical, the poetical, the mythological. Staubsauger - 1981

22. Rainer Spehl Qoffee stool 2000 Every object in the world can pass from a closed silent existence to an oral state Roland Barthes

23. Material Culture And The Everyday Material Culture The Study of Things (artifacts of Everyday life) Mihaly Csiksentmihalyi The things that surround us are inseparable from who we are (things are never neutral)

24. Material Culture And The Everyday John Heskett Utility and Significance of Everyday things Roland Barthes Everyday objects are not just things but a complex system of signs which allow us to read meaning into people and places