Taylor Downard
Sticky Correspondence: An animist design encounter
With a neo-animistic understanding of materials used in matrimonial jewellery, how can the design of ceremonial objects create sensory encounters that connect the object/entity with the subjects, changing their perception of the world?
Through conversations with materials, we can open the imaginary to an interconnected world where the boundary between object and subject becomes obscured, and the animated qualities of materials reveal themselves. How does adopting a neo-animistic worldview enrich our experience of interconnectedness and material agency? This research endeavours within the sticky cosmos of the Greek Orthodox Wedding Ceremony, where the wedding ring’s material animacy performs and subject/object relations manifest. Materials’ elemental narratives materialise through ritualised making and the design of sensory spatial encounters (devised in ritualised installations and spatialised artefacts). Attentive material understandings (immersive and sensory conversations with sugar, wax and metal) are conceived by listening to the whispers of materials. Attending to material vibrations unearths a sensory crescendo which has allowed me to begin understanding the sticky interrelatedness of all things.
