Objective/Subjective
“In April 2011 I made a short video of a hyperobject, an ancient bamboo forest on Qi Lai mountain in central Taiwan. The video demonstrates how interobjectivity works. What one watches and hears is the wind in the bamboo. What one watches and hears are the bamboo stems clicking one another. What one watches is a Quicktime movie, which samples visual images and sound at a certain rate, translating them into a more or less perforated version of themselves.”
This clip can be seen here (0:00 – 1:05):
The interaction between hyperobjects can be seen in local manifestations such as the one recorded by Morton, and can become evidence of eco-diegesis: as we are situated amongst the environment, and participate in the creation of the art made by this form of ‘nature’, the situatedness of both the creator and the viewer are intra-connected with the non-human elements of the art. If we think of the human perspective as part of the whole, equal in value to the others, we are using object-oriented ontology.
This photo depicts agricultural expansion into a forest. The human in this photo is only a reflection, not a representation. Thus, we intra-act with our environment, becoming part of the landscape rather than the foundational perspective. The photograph was not taken with a human perspective in mind: rather, the elements of the photo show the natural and the agricultural visually equally, using an object-oriented perception rather than a human (or subjective) one.
