Glasgow School of Art 2023

Materiality
talk transcript

Becca Rose / GSA
Feb 2023

Hello everyone, my name is Becca Rose and I am an artist and PhD candidate in the Design department at Goldsmiths where I study interaction. Recently I have been exploring the interaction between computers and potatoes (yes potatoes!) and today I am going to talk about materially, based on some theory and my work with potatoes.

I am sorry not be with you in person, Thea has shown me some of the work you are making, and it looks fantastic! I feel very honoured to be speaking to such a talented group!

I’ve tried to make this recording as lively as possible and I pose some questions at the end which I’d love for you have a think about to explore use to guide some of your work – If you have any questions for me please feel free to email me – the address is here, and I’d be happy to respond

Part 1: Introduction

There are many ideas about what materiality means, and today I am going to talk about one way of thinking about materials, and that is materials having a voice. This means that rather than being static objects or things, materials are dynamic, lively, and they impact the world around them.

I am going to start the talk by working with ideas from a writer called Karen Barad, who describes materials as having agency – which means materials are part of and have a say in the world around them. Barad is a scientist by training, and they get these ideas by bringing an imaginative and creative approach from the arts (a bit like what you are doing) to how we see atoms and the smallest matter. They bring feminist and queer perspectives to how we think about matter.

Barad’s work can be very wordy, and they write about many dimensions to materiality – they are a key thinker in my PhD and I’ve been grappling with them for three years now and still figuring things out! In this talk I have tried to bring in just a few key terms from their work – and this is agency and entanglement.

I’ll also explain a bit about my work with computers and potatoes – and how I think this agency in materials are entangled in this.

And at the end of the talk I’ll ask some questions which might be helpful for you to work with in your practice.

Part 2: Karen Barad

According to writer and theorist Karen Barad, materiality is all about materials having agency, the ability to act, having a voice.

Barad trained as a quantum physicist, and in their work they started to question the way we see the very smallest of matter – atoms. Science uses materials see’s materials as static, and passive, that are very separate from humans. Not assigning any meaning to them. Barad started to see that this is not actually the case, through reframing how we think about materials as part of larger networks.

Barad started to see that materials do not have hard edges around them. They are entangled with many other things, they enact and become through the many relationships they have.

Barad argues that materials have ongoing, modulating, historically situated forms that change and respond with time and place.

This means that materials are historically, socially, and environmentally situated. The material is entangled in these contexts.

So materiality, is all about matter being dynamic in this way.

Rather than having static, discrete properties, materials have a “shifting entanglement of relations”.

Matter is not fixed, but has a voice that responds to the world, part of the world and taking place through a relationship with the world.

Material is enacted

Matter is not a thing, but it is active, it is taking place, doing, a process

Matter comes from network of relations and at the same time it influences it – it has an impact

Matter is discursive, part of a discussion, it has a say.

Matter is in a process of “becoming that never sits still. The ongoing entanglement between matter and environment is a dynamic co-formation.

Part 3: Potatoes

My work is all about how we respond and interact with matter.

I work with potatoes because I am very curious about what they have to say, how they speak, and what agency they have.

It started by accident, when I was teaching a coding class to some undergraduate media students, and thought it would be fun to make potato prints as a starting point for visual code – using a software designed by artists called P5.JS – describe the process

There was something really interesting about how the students responded to the potatoes, and also how the potatoes took us to a place very far away from where the computer was taking us.

I also found that when my work moved into the realm of the potato I was able to have quite deep conversations with people about coding and quite technical things – everyone seemed to have a potato story, and wanted to talk more about the unlikely coupling of a computer and a potato. These conversations were so interesting, and potatoes had a lot to say – they had a lot of agency wherever I took them.

Potatoes are entangled with many social, cultural, and environmental relations

Potatoes are unique, lumpy, weird, imperfect, and heterogeneous.

They have a satisfyingly crunch when you slice into them.

They are the opposite of intimidating, with many appearances in social media, in memes, and comedic performances.

They are full of contradictions, as being a potato could mean being boring or lazy. and yet they are life sustaining and full of energy – for example, new sprouts can start growing from them if you leave them unattended

They are very connected to the earth, which is visible from the dirt they sometimes carry.

In initial research I also learned that there is a precedence for potato art

French filmmaker and artist Agnes Varda’s installation Patatutopia made for the 2003 Venice biennale transported us to a world of beauty through potatoes…

I would like people to be overwhelmed with emotion and delight looking at this most ordinary and humble vegetable, the potato, and to share my utopia of believing that the beauty of the world embedded in the beauty of old potatoes helps us to live and reconciles us with the chaos

Other potato art…

Takes time to listen – like Matilde Meirles “life of a potato”
https://matildemeireles.com/projects/potato.html

Or questions capitalist structures, such as David O’Reilly’s POTATO NFT photogrammetry, currently valued for over $1000

Over the course of year and a half I have been working with potatoes

In my work I see how potatoes fit into computing contexts…

As power when made into electrochemical batteries

As tactile sensors

As speakers

through “Potatogrammetry” and face filters

Always bringing with them with stories, and making space to share memories and feeling about both computers and potatoes.

In all of these contexts, the humble potato becomes has a voice, they bring new meanings, remembering, storytelling, and creates a sense of possibility.

This is important in the way that through the potato we are able to enter a realm of different possibilities – the potato brings grounding (being from the earth), a sense of kinship and collectivism from the memories and stories shared. One example of this is in a workshop on sensing potatoes slow everything down. We started using the term “potato time” to describe the process…

Part 4: Summary and questions

I think it is really important to think about materials in this way because it challenges an anthropocentric view of the world.

Barads work is important because it brings a whole new way of thinking about our relationship with materials. Rather than there being a hierarchy with humans and the top, It repositions human and materials into a web of relations, where they are in dialogue with each other, decentring a dualistic way of thinking about humans and materials as separate,

and thinking more in assemblages with materials, brings new questions about what these voices are like, and requires new vocabularies.

In terms of my work with potatoes – I don’t see potatoes as static, flat, or passive things. Far from it, they are very active collaborators in my work.

With potatoes I am always very careful to speak about them as collaborators. I don’t say that I “use” potatoes, I say I work with them, we are working together I am learning and seeing the word through their perspective.

In this talk I have said that materiality is a way of thinking about materials as have having a voice, being agents – enacting. I’m going to leave you with a few questions that you could ask when working with matter:

Firstly, what material would you like to spend a year working with? What are you drawn to, what speaks to you?

If materials have a voice – what do they say? And how do they speak – what is their language? What stories to they tell? How do they change the world around them?

How are you collaborating? What happens if you change language to say you are working with rather than using a material?

That’s all I have time for today – thank you for listing and I look forward to seeing what you make in your material collaborations.