Materiality

arts - what does it mean to be a human?

we’ve been making things for a very very long time, museum stories - this is how we got here. “imagining/making/creating is our way of being in the world” we create our world, we choose and shape our worlds […] a sculptor ‘seeing’ a figure emerging from marble = ancestors ‘seeing’ a tool emerging from a rock

Steps: from undifferentiated background ‘(a bunch of rocks) > picked up one > knocked bits off of it to create something else > no longer an undifferentiated background it becomes a workshop/store/home

Symbolic Behavior - to look at one thing and imagine something else

“the creation of these tools is the creation of the world”, sense of self changes as you are now observing the world, ability to look at wolrd objectively, perspective, distance, this has created problems and a desire to get back to that first state of being of the world

dilemma - the ability for our brains to step outside nature and be an observer,

meditation - trying to get back to it , sadness you can’t live in an imaginary world

skills needed to visualize tool within, and figure out how to make it, how to realize it

sense of physics and mechanics = complex thinking

chimpanzee brain size of a 2 year old’s brain, some difficulty in making tools, using tools, can’t quite do it, their brains have other things they are worrying about, don’t take your brain for granted!!!

ability to think abstractly and in symbols