Objects, as a medium, that humans use to interact with environments. The values of the object keep evolving. Whether the evolutions of the value occurred in the object’s shape, color, or material, they were all built on one common foundation, the affordance^[1].

The affordance sits in between human and environment, it is a collection of different types of connections^[2]between objects themselves, the user, and the environment.

People envision how they could interact with the environments by the affordance of objects. For hundreds of years, engineers and designers invested their talents to make an object’s affordance obvious. All these efforts serve one goal, make people understand what an object means to their lives. Body movements, gestures, and so much more were strictly designed to fulfill this goal.

The process of embodying affordance to objects is essentially the process of assigning values. This is such a magical process; a natural substantial being transformed into an object that has impacts on its surrounding with the will of its user.

Human is the key mediator who guides the transformation from a being to an object. This process is essentially the process of assigning values. The being here is referring to the Natural, which is the thing that relates to its own origin or source. It will not connect to any behaviors or concepts. It is an isolated or pure demonstration of its natural existence.

When a being comes to an object, it is transferring to an Artificial. The concept of the object ascends from a pure demonstration of its own existence to a collection of relations and/or behaviors. The singularity of this concept is that the Artificial is no longer confined to the substantial existence of the object. The Artificial becomes a collection that transcends materials.

For example, a tree stump becomes a stool, when it is in the context of someone or something sitting on it. The context applied to the stump is the key element that transforms the Natural to the Artificial.

This project questions the values of objects, how these values evolve, and how their transformation shapes the future iterations of objects.

Once the object shifts from the Natural to the Artificial, does its value still need support from materials? Will this concept lead to a novel understanding of the material? Will it lead to an evolution of the form? Will it bring us a different design methodology? And ultimately a revolution of the existences of objects?



‘We work with the substantial, but the emptiness is what we use.’ -Lao-Tzu

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The Natural:
the existence of the Natural means nothing to humans (the only stakeholder) but a part of its source.

The Artificial:
the existence of the Artificial is a container of behaviors and/or concepts (the source of the object doesn’t affect the meaning of the object).


[1] Davis, Jenny L.. How Artifacts Afford: The Power and Politics of Everyday Things. MIT Press. 2020
[2] Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social : an Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford University Press, 2005.